My sense is that objections to gene editing on the basis that it constitutes eugenics mostly do not represent people's deepest sentiments and commitments. There's a much more complex bundle of fears here, and eugenics is just a good grab bag term to express a fear at a kind of dystopian ick.
You start to get a sense after a while online that sometimes the issues people choose to bang the war drums about don't represent their real and deepest commitments, just trenches and hills they think are nicely defensible in terms of the Twitter culture war. The real ideas are below the surface, and often only implicitly mentally articulated.
Why does it matter? Because I think as genetic engineering starts to become a reality, the vague concerns about eugenics will melt away and we'll see much more specific discussions- e.g. about:
1. The rich poor gap expanding as the rich increase their human capital.
2. The possibility of value lock-in through gene choice- e.g. making our kids good little capitalists so they can compete in capitalism and inadvertently shaping the future- potentially in harmful ways.
3. The dangers of people choosing genes to enable their children to compete rather than genes for the common good, or even genes for their children's happiness. The genes that make your kid look at marketing statistics all day or optimise algorithmic trading may not be the genes that increase society's flourishing- or even their own.
4. People exercising far more control over their children through the deliberate shaping of their genetic endowment. This could manifest as people trying to 'copy' their values exactly through their offspring, or people deliberately creating cowed, obedient children through genetics.
5. The value of neurodiversity, diversity in general, and how genetic engineering could reduce or erase that.
6. The lock in of totalitarian regimes, e.g. through obedience engineering.
It seems to me that it's largely a moot point, because the singularity will overtake us before genetic modification can become a big issue.
"The actions of nature are amoral, therefore the actions of people are moral" seems to me to be a summary of your argument. It is not a good argument; in fact you youself then go on to describe ways that evolution has made people what you consider to be immoral.
It seems clear that people (motivated by what evolution to this point has made them, competitive and lacking care for people far away) would use gene editing to make their own offspring more intelligent, more capable, and so forth than those of other people, not to improve the happiness of human beings as a whole.
You confuse the power to do gene editing with the evolutionary process itself. Gene editing allows people to influence evolution, but that is no the same thing as control over the evolutionary process itself (or the logic of the evolutionary process). (Being able to do gene editing doesn't take away the fact that people who control resources have power over others: the groups who use gene editing to make their offspring more aggressive and competitive will win over the ones who use it to make their offspring "good").
(Warning: pedanticism) In the last paragraph, you mean "turned over the reins" not "reigns".
That’s one of the many reasons I reject evolution. The biggest reason I reject evolution is because it demands that we believe in processes that are only possible with miracles.
As a utilitarian what are your thoughts on coercive eugenics, both given various political constraints and a hypothetical where your have free rein as a dictator, so to speak. What also are your thoughts on the various utilitarian arguments in favour of concealing your true beliefs on such issues?
Great article - lots of thought-provoking stuff in here. The main problem I can see is that initially at least, the technology would only be available to the very wealthy. As a result, economic inequality would become biologically entrenched. What if rich parents can not only send their children to the most elite schools, but also modify their genes to make them more intelligent, more endurant, more resilient? Gene editing is a cool concept in theory, but we must tread VERY carefully when introducing it.
Good article! Maybe most attempts at eugenics at the hands of humans hasn't gone well, but those attempts are minuscule compared to the millions of years of selective pressure the "blind idiot god" put living creatures through, and the results of the latter have been way more abysmal (Tremendous natural suffering). We should try it in the hands of humans once again.
My sense is that objections to gene editing on the basis that it constitutes eugenics mostly do not represent people's deepest sentiments and commitments. There's a much more complex bundle of fears here, and eugenics is just a good grab bag term to express a fear at a kind of dystopian ick.
You start to get a sense after a while online that sometimes the issues people choose to bang the war drums about don't represent their real and deepest commitments, just trenches and hills they think are nicely defensible in terms of the Twitter culture war. The real ideas are below the surface, and often only implicitly mentally articulated.
Why does it matter? Because I think as genetic engineering starts to become a reality, the vague concerns about eugenics will melt away and we'll see much more specific discussions- e.g. about:
1. The rich poor gap expanding as the rich increase their human capital.
2. The possibility of value lock-in through gene choice- e.g. making our kids good little capitalists so they can compete in capitalism and inadvertently shaping the future- potentially in harmful ways.
3. The dangers of people choosing genes to enable their children to compete rather than genes for the common good, or even genes for their children's happiness. The genes that make your kid look at marketing statistics all day or optimise algorithmic trading may not be the genes that increase society's flourishing- or even their own.
4. People exercising far more control over their children through the deliberate shaping of their genetic endowment. This could manifest as people trying to 'copy' their values exactly through their offspring, or people deliberately creating cowed, obedient children through genetics.
5. The value of neurodiversity, diversity in general, and how genetic engineering could reduce or erase that.
6. The lock in of totalitarian regimes, e.g. through obedience engineering.
It seems to me that it's largely a moot point, because the singularity will overtake us before genetic modification can become a big issue.
That’s like the most impressive yet still pretty obvious to anyone who thought about it thing I’ve read in the past few months
Huge applause
Absolutely correct post! Thanks Matt.
"The actions of nature are amoral, therefore the actions of people are moral" seems to me to be a summary of your argument. It is not a good argument; in fact you youself then go on to describe ways that evolution has made people what you consider to be immoral.
It seems clear that people (motivated by what evolution to this point has made them, competitive and lacking care for people far away) would use gene editing to make their own offspring more intelligent, more capable, and so forth than those of other people, not to improve the happiness of human beings as a whole.
You confuse the power to do gene editing with the evolutionary process itself. Gene editing allows people to influence evolution, but that is no the same thing as control over the evolutionary process itself (or the logic of the evolutionary process). (Being able to do gene editing doesn't take away the fact that people who control resources have power over others: the groups who use gene editing to make their offspring more aggressive and competitive will win over the ones who use it to make their offspring "good").
(Warning: pedanticism) In the last paragraph, you mean "turned over the reins" not "reigns".
That’s one of the many reasons I reject evolution. The biggest reason I reject evolution is because it demands that we believe in processes that are only possible with miracles.
As a utilitarian what are your thoughts on coercive eugenics, both given various political constraints and a hypothetical where your have free rein as a dictator, so to speak. What also are your thoughts on the various utilitarian arguments in favour of concealing your true beliefs on such issues?
Great article - lots of thought-provoking stuff in here. The main problem I can see is that initially at least, the technology would only be available to the very wealthy. As a result, economic inequality would become biologically entrenched. What if rich parents can not only send their children to the most elite schools, but also modify their genes to make them more intelligent, more endurant, more resilient? Gene editing is a cool concept in theory, but we must tread VERY carefully when introducing it.
Good article! Maybe most attempts at eugenics at the hands of humans hasn't gone well, but those attempts are minuscule compared to the millions of years of selective pressure the "blind idiot god" put living creatures through, and the results of the latter have been way more abysmal (Tremendous natural suffering). We should try it in the hands of humans once again.