How is this kind of reasoning about counterfactual children never born different from the regular Christian stuff about not masturbating?
A statements like ‘my parents would have used polygenic screening to kill me’ is no more meaningful than ‘you are murdering your counterfactual children when you wear a condom’ or something like that. It seems to have more meaning because you are talking about yourself, but in the universe where ‘you’ were ‘murdered’ by polygenic screening, ‘you’ does not refer to anything.
Is tendency to wish to transition one’s gender genetic? I recall reading that the number of people self-identifying as trans has tripled in the last decade. That would suggest that the trait is probably not very heritable and would be hard to select against.
In the process of this development, these networks assign themselves a physiological form gender; intersex people get a mix of attributes at this stage, but for most people, even for most trans people, this stage almost entirely selects one profile of sexual dimorphism; typically for people with XX chromosomes, this stage selects female, and for people with XY, this stage selects male. However, it’s well known to science and can be looked up that sometimes people can be apparently entirely one body-form and have no desire or urge to transition, and yet have opposite chromosomes from their body’s layout-presentation.
This sounds like you’re talking about the SRY cascade without explicitly naming it. But that process starts at 6-8 weeks. Embryos are screened after 3-7 days of development. There’s no way to see what is happening with the SRY cascade at that stage.
Maybe there are some genes that influence the course it is likely to take? I understand your concern.
But I also think some of this tech could HELP acceptance of trans people. I suspect that many of the people who are anti-trans are at some level worried about its effects on family formation. Without freezing gametes, many trans people will not be able to have biological children after medically transitioning. Gametogenesis could give anyone the ability to have kids if they want them, regardless of their gender identity or transition status. I think that would at least do a little to quell the hate against transgender people (though I understand most of the people who get upset about transgender people are not very rational about their views).
yeah, your counterarguments aren’t entirely implausible. I might be able to be convinced out of my current viewpoint by further debate on the topic of how to ensure that this tech actually has prosocial outcomes. But at least you have a picture of why I’m quite so worried about destructive outcomes and why the name change doesn’t really weigh on it.
without explicitly naming it
I didn’t know about it, I probably had seen things downstream of that research. I’m not a biologist, my bio knowledge has a lot of jump point search flavored holes.
I certainly concede that the argument about counterfactual populations has a lot more force.
Personally I would solve this with increased support for eg. polygenic screening and other reproductive technologies and less regulation about what they can select for, and hope that people do their weird people thing and choose diversity. I worry that regulation will always result in more standardization.
And I for sure don’t think punishing people for making reproductive choices is a good move, even if those choices result in the extinction of specific populations.
even if those choices result in the extinction of specific populations.
so anyway, this is why I started out saying a mere rename doesn’t cut it, you need to actually change policy. epilogenics is still eugenics, even if it’s not mass murder. parents should not have the right to deny their offspring a chance to exist. offspring are not property.
also, I actually do agree with conservatives that loss of any genetic information is kinda sad, I just don’t think any non-selective loss has the problems I care about, and anyway people have the right to simply not have kids; what I don’t think they have the right to do is spy on their kids’ futures by reading their genome in order to decide whether to have kids. humanity is used to our genomes being randomized by parental choice, so it is part of us; humanity is not used to genomes being steered by parental choice and that’s a big enough change to warrant real conflict.
okay, sure, that might move the boundaries of the concept that I haven’t pinned down, but I have a pinned point it doesn’t move: parents shouldn’t be able to select children by personality traits in ways new to society. This is a capability we should not add to humanity; it is against transhumanism.
parents should not have the right to deny their offspring a chance to exist
but again here you are switching back from the population level to the individual level. Those offspring do not exist by default, there are no ‘offspring’ that the parents have ‘denied the right to exist’. There are only counterfactual offspring, who already don’t exist.
spy on their kids’ futures by reading their genome
this, on the other hand, may be more valid—because the parents will ‘spy on’ both actual and counterfactual childrens genomes (and select the former over the latter). But you still seem to be taking the rights of those children as significantly more important than the rights of the parents. But this (‘whose rights, parents or children’) seems like the fundamental crux that we are unlikely to shift one another on here.
Edit: and, reading through your other comments, there seems to be a question about the social impact of these technologies. This is then an impact on the rights of everyone—the parent, the child, and the rest of society. Also interesting, and I think it would be helpful to seperate out objections on the individual (parent/child) level, and on the society level, and I feel like they are getting muddled a lot here.
How is this kind of reasoning about counterfactual children never born different from the regular Christian stuff about not masturbating?
A statements like ‘my parents would have used polygenic screening to kill me’ is no more meaningful than ‘you are murdering your counterfactual children when you wear a condom’ or something like that. It seems to have more meaning because you are talking about yourself, but in the universe where ‘you’ were ‘murdered’ by polygenic screening, ‘you’ does not refer to anything.
because that doesn’t let them select against trans people.
Is tendency to wish to transition one’s gender genetic? I recall reading that the number of people self-identifying as trans has tripled in the last decade. That would suggest that the trait is probably not very heritable and would be hard to select against.
I currently believe so, yes. possibly it’s during early gestation.
This sounds like you’re talking about the SRY cascade without explicitly naming it. But that process starts at 6-8 weeks. Embryos are screened after 3-7 days of development. There’s no way to see what is happening with the SRY cascade at that stage.
Maybe there are some genes that influence the course it is likely to take? I understand your concern.
But I also think some of this tech could HELP acceptance of trans people. I suspect that many of the people who are anti-trans are at some level worried about its effects on family formation. Without freezing gametes, many trans people will not be able to have biological children after medically transitioning. Gametogenesis could give anyone the ability to have kids if they want them, regardless of their gender identity or transition status. I think that would at least do a little to quell the hate against transgender people (though I understand most of the people who get upset about transgender people are not very rational about their views).
yeah, your counterarguments aren’t entirely implausible. I might be able to be convinced out of my current viewpoint by further debate on the topic of how to ensure that this tech actually has prosocial outcomes. But at least you have a picture of why I’m quite so worried about destructive outcomes and why the name change doesn’t really weigh on it.
I didn’t know about it, I probably had seen things downstream of that research. I’m not a biologist, my bio knowledge has a lot of jump point search flavored holes.
Ah I see.
I certainly concede that the argument about counterfactual populations has a lot more force.
Personally I would solve this with increased support for eg. polygenic screening and other reproductive technologies and less regulation about what they can select for, and hope that people do their weird people thing and choose diversity. I worry that regulation will always result in more standardization.
And I for sure don’t think punishing people for making reproductive choices is a good move, even if those choices result in the extinction of specific populations.
so anyway, this is why I started out saying a mere rename doesn’t cut it, you need to actually change policy. epilogenics is still eugenics, even if it’s not mass murder. parents should not have the right to deny their offspring a chance to exist. offspring are not property.
also, I actually do agree with conservatives that loss of any genetic information is kinda sad, I just don’t think any non-selective loss has the problems I care about, and anyway people have the right to simply not have kids; what I don’t think they have the right to do is spy on their kids’ futures by reading their genome in order to decide whether to have kids. humanity is used to our genomes being randomized by parental choice, so it is part of us; humanity is not used to genomes being steered by parental choice and that’s a big enough change to warrant real conflict.
Choosing a sexual partner IS an example of genomes being steered by parental choice.
okay, sure, that might move the boundaries of the concept that I haven’t pinned down, but I have a pinned point it doesn’t move: parents shouldn’t be able to select children by personality traits in ways new to society. This is a capability we should not add to humanity; it is against transhumanism.
Parents already do, they can abort children with known abnormalities in the womb.
but again here you are switching back from the population level to the individual level. Those offspring do not exist by default, there are no ‘offspring’ that the parents have ‘denied the right to exist’. There are only counterfactual offspring, who already don’t exist.
this, on the other hand, may be more valid—because the parents will ‘spy on’ both actual and counterfactual childrens genomes (and select the former over the latter). But you still seem to be taking the rights of those children as significantly more important than the rights of the parents. But this (‘whose rights, parents or children’) seems like the fundamental crux that we are unlikely to shift one another on here.
Edit: and, reading through your other comments, there seems to be a question about the social impact of these technologies. This is then an impact on the rights of everyone—the parent, the child, and the rest of society. Also interesting, and I think it would be helpful to seperate out objections on the individual (parent/child) level, and on the society level, and I feel like they are getting muddled a lot here.