scr gene djinni

[jonah <jonah@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

on 9/4/02 9:58 am, Tom Forwood at tom@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

> We have only a finite time upon this earth and no-one can put in the
> hours of training to become a top class athlete and work long hours to
> be a succesfull buisnesman and create great works of art and develop
> complex theories of the universe.  It is best to pick a field you will
> excel at and concentrate upon it.
>
> We only have a finite time in this wor

Well, why not *make* time then? While we're on the subject of genetic
predisposition, let's talk about genetic engineering and the morality
thereof (sort of tying in a thread from (void), while we're at it). I was
thinking about this the other day when discussing it with my
Guardian-reading, folk-singing,
ill-fitting-vaguely-ethnic-clothing-wearing parents[0], who seemed
uncomfortable to even consider it an acceptable thing to do. It'll be
interesting to see what the ::scr attitude is (although I bet I can
guess).

I mean, I can understand why people get uncomfortable about it, after all,
the nazis were into eugenics, and so a taboo has been placed on it, but
only because the nazis had this arse-over-tip race-based model going, and
not, IMHO, because genetic engineering is an inherently evil thing to
do. As Banksy[1] puts it - what is more ours to play with than our own
genetic makeup?

So who agrees with me on that point? That genetic engineering would be a
good thing for humanity to adopt and refine, perhaps with a view not just
to eradicating disease but also to improve and extend *all* our abilities
(and lifespan), so that perhaps anyone *can* become a fantastic
businesswoman, top athlete, startling artist *and* insightful
scientist? Is the goal of re-engineering the human race into over-people
an evil plan rife with erroneous assumptions of prejudice and superiority
or is it an essentially benevolent idea which will go further towards
establishing true equality than any mealy-mouthed politically-correct
word-banning social control?

My opinion? Well, looking at only the benefits, it's easy to say yes, it's
a great idea. But the thing is, it has to be done out of humanitarian
motives, with a view to being applied to *everybody*, not just a rich
elite. My old man made a point about man fecking with nature usually being
bad, and I pointed out the usual rebuttals: medicine, agriculture,
domestication of animals etc. He pointed out a load of other examples
where the results were less than desirable. There seems to be a
pattern: when humanity mucks about with nature for greed reasons, the
results tend to be pretty shitty. 

So, my opinion is that it's not an inherently immoral idea to create
superhumans through genetic engineering, so long as it's not done for a
capitalist profit motive. I find it interesting that on most of the tech
mailing lists I'm on, the first half of that statement would be less
controversial than the second. 

Maybe that's another point for discussion: sometimes I think that
"geeks" have a very unusual approach to moral questions. Sometimes I think
they/(we?) have an almost over-objective view of these questions. As Al
says:

> [I am] good with computers and mathematics and physics and stuff, but
> I end up trying to map everything into that kind of system which can
> be a handicap.

Which reminded me of the (largely pointless) discussion[2] we had a few
weeks back about benevolent dictators selected on merit. I've just
realised that Al was mapping the model for running a multi-user operating
system to running a civilisation. I now understand his point a little
better (although I still don't agree with it).

-- 
matt
"There are no honourable bargains involving exchange of qualitative
merchandise like souls for quantitative merchandise like time and
money."
 - William S. Burroughs

[0] i.e. very like me, except for the folk-singing
[1] Just ignore the fanboyometer - it must be miscalibrated
[2] Al - this is *not* an attempt to revive said discussion - as we both
know it's *really* not suitable for ::scr