The Singularity

[warty goblin]

Well, if you don't consider people having better health, longer life-spans, greater learning and problem solving abilities, less disruptive personalities and more aesthetically pleasing appearances worthy goals then I'd say "non-normative" is a somewhat of an understatement.

I'm not arguing that any of those are bad ends. I'm skeptical of the means, since the potential for bad outcomes or outright misuse seems pretty high. I have not argued against every doing any of these things in any way however, merely that caution is probably a good thing here.

The only reason I'm unsure about having children is the high environmental cost of more wealthy first world people, and the high probability of the world sucking for the next hundred years or so. Given the choice, I prefer to not contribute unnecessarily to the problem.

Also, it's one thing to say that you don't see "tampering" with our genomes as morally right, but as I tried to make clear earlier, it is absolutely our best option for survival as a species. These aren't marginal changes we're talking about; even at our current limited understanding we've done everything from making cancer-resistant mice who live much longer than their peers, made mice who are are virtually impossible to traumatize, greatly improved their abilities to learn and recall information, increased their musculature and muscles density safely and given them photo-receptors to perceive entirely novel (to them) colors just to name a handful. The potential for humans to become better tool-builders and users, to become more social, to be more reactive to changes in our environment and more resistant to harm; those are all traits that not only increase fitness, but do so in such a broad way that I can't see them as maladaptive under any circumstances.

There's lots of reasons I can think of to argue for things like that, from alleviated suffering to wanting glow in the dark fingernails just for the hell of it, but the continued existence of the species? We got through an ice age with nothing more than rocks; our genetic future isn't under threat here. The future of technologically advanced civilization maybe, and I could see an argument for those things bettering the odds of that continuing, but that's a different argument.

The only thing I argued as being directly malaadaptive was higher scholastic achievement. Since education is pretty strongly correlated with smaller number of offspring, this seems a fairly obvious conclusion. The Nobel prize winner with one child has less genetic influence on the next generation than the burger flipper with three.

I'm not sure where you're going with the environmental thing. We need to make sure the planet continues to be livable, but doesn't changing human behavior fit into that? People who need less food, who can survive more extreme environments, and who are better able to make and use new less wasteful technologies are all good things for the environment. Not a short-term solution, obviously, but a part of a larger long-term one.

My environmental views tend to be rather non anthro-centric. While not rendering the planet uninhabitable for humans is good, I'm generally more concerned about keeping it a reasonable place to live for all the other stuff. Achieving this goal requires occasionally not doing things I otherwise would like to.

Also I'm sick and got about four hours of sleep last night, which tends to increase my misanthropy quotient considerably. So take everything I say today as the absolute worst-possible-case extremity of my views. The average or median tend to rather more agreeable.

[Water_Bear]

Sorry to hear you're under the weather, that's never a fun situation.

I've never been able to get into ethics as more than a theoretical exercise because they seem so unbelievably arbitrary. That's why this kind of debate is so incredibly frustrating for me, because it's a case where the future is sitting right here in front of us and people are talking about it like some Philosophy 101 thought experiment.

Why should the threat of people being hurt stop us from making people less vulnerable to harm? Or the threat of people using technology unreasonably stop us from using that technology to make people more reasonable? Why say "we're good enough" if we could be more than that?

It's literally something I can't comprehend.

(I wrote a response to what you said about survival, but it's kind of long and not incredibly relevant so I spoilered it)

Spoiler

Show

But yeah, it seems like right now the biggest threats to human survival as a species are our own nature and the fragility to the ecosystems we rely on. One of the big reasons I got into genetics in the first place is to fix that; humanity needs to improve if we want to get off-world without blowing ourselves up first, and the only way to do that is to change at a fundamental level.

Climate change could kill anywhere from a few hundred million to a few billion people, but is something we could survive. Global thermonuclear war is looking less and less likely but is still possible and, for the species, survivable (nuclear winter is a myth originally encouraged by the Soviet government to prevent a feared American first strike). Man-made bioweapons would be lucky to kill 95% of the world's population, and probably not more than half. Meteor impacts are fairly predictable and manageable, but if we're distracted by another apocalyptic event could be disastrous. Massive releases of methane gas from oceanic deposits, vacuum metastability events (fingers crossed that we're not in a false vacuum state) or gamma-ray bursts from space could pretty much kill off the whole population without forewarning, but are pretty unlikely. Rogue AI, going from what I've read, is pretty much a roll of the dice whether or not it wants our carbon to build things more than it wants us to be alive and happy. Alien life is the big unknown, in pretty much any sense of the word, but we really ought to be prepared for the worst case scenario.

If we can move enough of our population off-world to ensure that no one random disaster can kill the entire species and make ourselves smart enough not to kill ourselves by building AI incorrectly or with WMDs, we only have to worry about aliens. FTL looks unlikely, so sending slow-ships out to scatter the species further is probably enough to mitigate that threat.

TL;DR: It's not so much "if we don't do this now, we're dooomed!!" as that if we don't improve as a species eventually our number will come up and we won't be ready for it. Long terms survival probably requires better-than-human foresight and ingenuity, plus a lot more ability to take punishment.

[warty goblin]

Sorry to hear you're under the weather, that's never a fun situation.

I've never been able to get into ethics as more than a theoretical exercise because they seem so unbelievably arbitrary. That's why this kind of debate is so incredibly frustrating for me, because it's a case where the future is sitting right here in front of us and people are talking about it like some Philosophy 101 thought experiment.

Why should the threat of people being hurt stop us from making people less vulnerable to harm? Or the threat of people using technology unreasonably stop us from using that technology to make people more reasonable? Why say "we're good enough" if we could be more than that?

It's literally something I can't comprehend.

I can see how that would be frustrating. I do have the bad habit of dumping ethics on top of everything. Probably ethics are tractable to logic, and most of my training is in logic.

As I said before, I don't see those things as bad (I'm not saying you said I said they were either, I just want to make that clear at the beginning.) Where you and I seem to part ways is that I don't regard technology as an ends even of itself. It's a means to other things, a tool. And like all tools, the more powerful it is, the more careful one must be. You can lacerate your finger pretty well with a hand saw, but you probably won't cut it off. Screw up with a bandsaw, and the odds of counting in base nine are considerably higher.

To my mind this doesn't say 'no bandsaws forever.' It says be careful when you do use it, and if you can solve the problem with a lower risk tool, it's worth carefully considering that option. More importantly, it's worth considering that option before you accidentally end up getting called Frodo for the rest of your life. Same here. I have been fairly careful to avoid arguing a position that any and all human genetic alteration or purposeful selection is wrong, and if I have said something to that effect it was a slip of the fingers. The position I have tried to present is that this is a supremely powerful new tool, and cautious application is probably the best course of action. Not that we shouldn't use it, but that we should do so with an eye to keeping all our fingers.

Hey, that line works both in the metaphor and the actual context.

Now granted this has probably gotten fairly tied up in my general pessimism about humanity, and the growing realization that we're probably in for some seriously bad crap due to global warming. I tend to be a conservative person already, and the latter in particular tends to exacerbate my 'slam on the breaks' tendencies to an unfortunate, and unhelpful, degree. And in general I find it hard to get excited about new technology simply because its new technology. I'm the kind of guy who's still fantasizing about being able to get rid of his cell phone again.

(I wrote a response to what you said about survival, but it's kind of long and not incredibly relevant so I spoilered it)

Spoiler

Show

But yeah, it seems like right now the biggest threats to human survival as a species are our own nature and the fragility to the ecosystems we rely on. One of the big reasons I got into genetics in the first place is to fix that; humanity needs to improve if we want to get off-world without blowing ourselves up first, and the only way to do that is to change at a fundamental level.

Climate change could kill anywhere from a few hundred million to a few billion people, but is something we could survive. Global thermonuclear war is looking less and less likely but is still possible and, for the species, survivable (nuclear winter is a myth originally encouraged by the Soviet government to prevent a feared American first strike). Man-made bioweapons would be lucky to kill 95% of the world's population, and probably not more than half. Meteor impacts are fairly predictable and manageable, but if we're distracted by another apocalyptic event could be disastrous. Massive releases of methane gas from oceanic deposits, vacuum metastability events (fingers crossed that we're not in a false vacuum state) or gamma-ray bursts from space could pretty much kill off the whole population without forewarning, but are pretty unlikely. Rogue AI, going from what I've read, is pretty much a roll of the dice whether or not it wants our carbon to build things more than it wants us to be alive and happy. Alien life is the big unknown, in pretty much any sense of the word, but we really ought to be prepared for the worst case scenario.

If we can move enough of our population off-world to ensure that no one random disaster can kill the entire species and make ourselves smart enough not to kill ourselves by building AI incorrectly or with WMDs, we only have to worry about aliens. FTL looks unlikely, so sending slow-ships out to scatter the species further is probably enough to mitigate that threat.

TL;DR: It's not so much "if we don't do this now, we're dooomed!!" as that if we don't improve as a species eventually our number will come up and we won't be ready for it. Long terms survival probably requires better-than-human foresight and ingenuity, plus a lot more ability to take punishment.

All reasonable observations. I tend to ignore the gamma rays et al as being both unpredictable and unstoppable, so why worry? Space travel comes across as unreasonably hard, and exo-colonization chancy and unlikely to the extreme in my eyes. One of the reasons I'm rather concerned about saving this planet, in my eyes its the only one we'll probably ever have. It's certainly the only one we can count on.

[Water_Bear]

There really isn't much risk of losing fingers though, more like having your fingernails clipped. The worst outcome I've heard seriously put forward by people who understand the science is that we'll become more of a monoculture than we are already, and even that seems suspect when you consider the vast range of genes from other species or rare human alleles we're already considering modifying people with. I'd be shocked if more than a few thousand people died from complications with genetic enhancement, and frankly we could lose a couple billion and still repopulate in a century if we needed to.

And as for space travel being difficult, that's the reason it's valuable. With space as vast as it is, scattering people out even just over the moons and planets of our solar system is a massive safeguard, not to mention colonizing exoplanets. Obviously we need to keep earth in good condition, but if we learn anything from climate change it should be that we can't continue to rely on the earth's natural processes to meet our needs as a species.

[Zeful]

So genetic enhancement is too dangerous to be ethical because we haven't done enough human testing, and actually doing those tests would also be unethical?

Given those tests require several counts of first degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder, on top of quite a few other medical charges (not necessarily malpractice, but many things that outside of the context of the tests would be) that is beyond me to list. Those tests necessitate the creation of a group of people who have no rights or protections, whose mere existence is to live, be tested, and then die for the forwarding of science, because a lot of those tests require a level of control we don't have with normal breeding.

There aren't a lot of nations that are willing to throw away rights for human tests animals for all the PR backlash, internationally or nationally. It's possible for people to be voted into office specifically to overturn that kind of legislation, resulting in little change. And that's without people getting pissed off about the specific limits for the people who don't have rights, governmental oversight, protections and legislation for matters of abuse.

[Carry2]

Given those tests require several counts of first degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder, on top of quite a few other medical charges (not necessarily malpractice, but many things that outside of the context of the tests would be) that is beyond me to list...

I think this is an exaggeration of the ethical complications involved. We already have established procedures for testing out potentially-dangerous medications and getting them ready for market. Sure, human meds have to go through lengthy trials based on protein simulation, cell cultures and animal studies before you go anywhere near a human patient, but that's something you can just as easily do with gene-modification.

Alzheimer and HIV medications required finding sufferers who were desperate enough to actually take these meds, and tracking the long-term effects often required years of follow-up studies. And there are substantial numbers of desperate wannabee parents out there, with a history of congenital diseases, who would likely be willing to volunteer for gene-tailoring even if there are some slim-but-nonzero risks involved, and even if it takes a decade or two to confirm the results.

Nobody's calling for immediate mass-production of Julian Bashir. But the need to proceed with caution is not an argument for failing to proceed.

.

[Carry2]

Mostly I don't see genetic alteration actually improving the species. I'm not even sure improvement is a meaningful concept for a species, beyond becoming better suited to its environment. Genetic alteration for economic success does not provide this. Arguably, given the strong correlation between economic success and fewer (or no) children, such genetic tampering is actually mal-adaptive.

That is one of our species' more peculiar reproductive habits, alright. It's possible that a mature global economy with something close to western living standards for every nation would require governments to actively subsidise child-bearing, but that's a ways off.

(Yes, I'm aware that the western world represents 20% of global population consuming 80% of global resources. I'm hoping that improved manufacturing efficiency and conservation measures, plus laying off the damn steaks, will make some degree of frugal comfort accessible to the masses.)

While I absolutely agree that there need not be a single monolithic direction for human evolution, I don't think one can reasonably argue that our present environment- the landscape of a post-industrial civilisation- is one that we have finished adapting to. (A simple example is our tendency to eat so much meat, fat and sugar, because meat, fat and sugar were hard to come by as hunter-gatherers and vital in moderation. We also tend to overeat in response to either dieting OR easy access to food, because putting on fat reserves is vital for hunter-gatherers. But none of these instincts are useful to a species with refrigerators and cattle-ranches. Which isn't to say that culture and government policy don't impact obesity- just look at france vs. the US- but it seems likely that genes do play a role.)

Nor is it like the species is under imminent threat of collapse due to genetic defectiveness. Civilization may be under threat of collapse, or serious compromise, due to unmitigated environmental exploitation. That is an ethical concern. Spending huge amounts of money so wealthy first world people can have marginally better babies is an ethical concern, and not one that I see contributing to the solution of the former problem.

Well... theoretically speaking, if several billion people uploaded their minds to cyberspace, they could be a hell of a lot more energy efficient. Not to mention migrating off-planet. But that might be centuries away.

In the shorter term, if we at least don't want to exacerbate inequality, I believe it is important to subsidise access to these technologies, and/or bring down their inherent costs, as quickly as possible, so that anyone, however poverty-stricken, has the option to avail of them.

In the more general sense, investment in GNR technologies could yield improvements in energy production, waste reclamation, living standards and crop yields that would certainly help alleviate the pressures associated with population growth, including upon the environment.

[warty goblin]

That is one of our species' more peculiar reproductive habits, alright. It's possible that a mature global economy with something close to western living standards for every nation would require governments to actively subsidise child-bearing, but that's a ways off.

(Yes, I'm aware that the western world represents 20% of global population consuming 80% of global resources. I'm hoping that improved manufacturing efficiency and conservation measures, plus laying off the damn steaks, will make some degree of frugal comfort accessible to the masses.)

Mostly I'm concerned about the inequality tipping over into serious violence.

While I absolutely agree that there need not be a single monolithic direction for human evolution, I don't think one can reasonably argue that our present environment- the landscape of a post-industrial civilisation- is one that we have finished adapting to. (A simple example is our tendency to eat so much meat, fat and sugar, because meat, fat and sugar were hard to come by as hunter-gatherers and vital in moderation. We also tend to overeat in response to either dieting OR easy access to food, because putting on fat reserves is vital for hunter-gatherers. But none of these instincts are useful to a species with refrigerators and cattle-ranches. Which isn't to say that culture and government policy don't impact obesity- just look at france vs. the US- but it seems likely that genes do play a role.)

Thing is, from a strictly evolutionary point of view, as long as you live to reproduce, it doesn't really matter in what physical shape you do it in. Particularly in a modern society where parental survival is not required for offspring surviving to reproduce. From a personal health perspective, it obviously matters. From a public policy and environmental perspective, it absolutely matters. From an evolutionary one? Unless hordes of people start dying off from morbid obesity related effects before they can have children, it isn't much of a pressure.

Well... theoretically speaking, if several billion people uploaded their minds to cyberspace, they could be a hell of a lot more energy efficient. Not to mention migrating off-planet. But that might be centuries away.

Space emigration isn't the solution, it takes too damn much energy to get people there. I did the numbers on this a while ago, and just to ship off the yearly population growth, you need something like 10% of the entire world's energy output for that year. (IIRC I used 2009 data). The annual growth rate is just north of 1%. That's the bare minimum number based on a naively optimistic conservation of energy calculation: I made no allowances for inefficient engines, air resistance, the energy cost of lifting your fuel or or even space suits.

In the shorter term, if we at least don't want to exacerbate inequality, I believe it is important to subsidise access to these technologies, and/or bring down their inherent costs, as quickly as possible, so that anyone, however poverty-stricken, has the option to avail of them.

In the more general sense, investment in GNR technologies could yield improvements in energy production, waste reclamation, living standards and crop yields that would certainly help alleviate the pressures associated with population growth, including upon the environment.

All reasonable options. Personally I've always liked Kim Stanley Robinson's idea to entitle everyone to 3/4 of a child.

[Water_Bear]

People keep talking about perpetuating inequality, but if the wealthiest people use genetic enhancement to improve their offspring and they inherit that money and power, the end result is essentially a meritocracy. Sure it's not equal per se, but I can't think of a fairer way of dividing up wealth and political access than by ability.

[Ravens_cry]

People keep talking about perpetuating inequality, but if the wealthiest people use genetic enhancement to improve their offspring and they inherit that money and power, the end result is essentially a meritocracy. Sure it's not equal per se, but I can't think of a fairer way of dividing up wealth and political access than by ability.

That makes vast assumptions of the role of Nature verses Nurture that seem untenable.

[Water_Bear]

That makes vast assumptions of the role of Nature verses Nurture that seem untenable.

Compare someone like that mysostatin deficient kid in Germany to an otherwise very fit child anywhere else; even with intense weight training, the one who had a six-pack as an infant is going to be stronger. Or a savant like that Norwegian language professor who can pick up any language in under two weeks to someone we'd otherwise call a genius in the very same field. When you give people the ability to select rare traits like this for their children and add in the potential for using genes from other species, it's pretty obvious that there is no possible level of training which could equalize them.

[Gavinfoxx]

That makes vast assumptions of the role of Nature verses Nurture that seem untenable.

Well, there's also the fact that a greater understanding of genetics will also help us understand by what stimuli and situations particular genes are expressed.

[warty goblin]

People keep talking about perpetuating inequality, but if the wealthiest people use genetic enhancement to improve their offspring and they inherit that money and power, the end result is essentially a meritocracy. Sure it's not equal per se, but I can't think of a fairer way of dividing up wealth and political access than by ability.

Worth through bloodline. How delightfully medieval.

Being able to literally buy a better offspring seems like the sort of thing that quite easily could lead to massive stagnation of economic mobility. This is not a good thing for a society, even beyond the hopefully obvious social justice issues.

In its less extreme forms, such stagnation just leads to apathy on the part of the immobile population. It isn't an economic good, and it certainly doesn't improve people's quality of life. It may be a meritocracy in some degenerate sense, but how does that better humanity? A meritocracy is only good when it grants rewards to those who earn them, and gives everybody a chance to do so. Otherwise it's just stacking the deck and proclaiming the victory fair.

And people get angry when the deck is stacked too hard. People start to get violent, to rebel. Humanity is already quite good at dehumanizing people, I'll bet it gets real easy when the 'other' is shot full of animal genes. Just look at the history of the twentieth century, there's plenty of examples of this in action.

[Carry2]

People keep talking about perpetuating inequality, but if the wealthiest people use genetic enhancement to improve their offspring and they inherit that money and power, the end result is essentially a meritocracy. Sure it's not equal per se, but I can't think of a fairer way of dividing up wealth and political access than by ability.

1. Joseph Stalin was an exceptionally gifted politician. But he was still a psychopath. Ability does not directly confer benevolence.
2. A genetic aristocracy might deliberately restrict or monopolise access to similar technologies for the underclasses, based on the possibility of a threat to their power-base. Or, worse, deliberately engineer the underclass for traits they considered desirable.
3. If meritocracy means that power correlates with ability, a society where everyone is granted the same degree (if not necessarily type) of ability, with corresponding political clout, would also be meritocratic. And probably suck less. Given certain alternatives.

Worth through bloodline. How delightfully medieval.

Oh- Excellent points, BTW. Like I said- interesting place to visit, wouldn't wanna live there.

[Zeful]

People keep talking about perpetuating inequality, but if the wealthiest people use genetic enhancement to improve their offspring and they inherit that money and power, the end result is essentially a meritocracy. Sure it's not equal per se, but I can't think of a fairer way of dividing up wealth and political access than by ability.

So people who's parents couldn't afford transhumanism are just slaves then? Y harro thar self-perpetuating cycle!

[Ravens_cry]

It has be noticed that outdated scientific theories only really go out of fashion when those supporting them die. Greatly extended lifespans, one goal of transhumanism, could choke scientific progress.

[Carry2]

Bleh. This is probably coming across as a little too alarmist. Again, I'm reasonably confident that the cost of treatments like this could be brought well down over the next decades, and the costs aren't vast compared to what you need to invest in, e.g, education regardless. (Even if I believe that our educational systems could stand vast improvement in regards to efficiency.*)

It's true that old scientists rarely discard their favourite theories, but strictly speaking, we don't know if that's not just another side-effect of aging. If you can cure people of wrinkles, maybe you can cure them of intransigence.


* The basic philosophy of the system appears to be "you can lead a horse to water, then dunk their head repeatedly in the trough until they drink, damnit."

[Ravens_cry]

I say we should look at potential pitfall very carefully before we start dividing ourselves into different species based on wealth and power.

[Carry2]

Mostly I'm concerned about the inequality tipping over into serious violence.

Conceivably. Of course, there are regions of the world where it's hard to imagine the violence getting much worse, and those are already pretty damn unequal. Thankfully, they don't have functional nukes.

Thing is, from a strictly evolutionary point of view, as long as you live to reproduce, it doesn't really matter in what physical shape you do it in...

Yeah... but by that logic, if the prevailing environmental conditions happen to feature, for example, pre-implantation genetic diagnosis and a combination of cultural values and government policy that expressly discourage obesity... then that is likely to have an impact on the proportion of conceptions that make it to reproductive maturity. And if we have to abandon all value judgements on the basis that 'evolution doesn't have a goal in mind', then neither do we have any basis for condemning this scenario.

If, by contrast, there are value judgements we can make independently of naturalistic arguments about default behaviour, then perhaps it is fair to say that the human organism leaves some margin for improvement.

Space emigration isn't the solution, it takes too damn much energy to get people there. I did the numbers on this a while ago, and just to ship off the yearly population growth, you need something like 10% of the entire world's energy output for that year. (IIRC I used 2009 data). The annual growth rate is just north of 1%. That's the bare minimum number based on a naively optimistic conservation of energy calculation: I made no allowances for inefficient engines, air resistance, the energy cost of lifting your fuel or or even space suits.

Yeah, but have you considered the transport cost reductions if we ever get, say, space elevators working? (I personally reckon launch loops are more promising- you don't need fancy new materials, could get transport costs potentially down to 3 dollars per kilo, and a much longer operating life.)

All reasonable options. Personally I've always liked Kim Stanley Robinson's idea to entitle everyone to 3/4 of a child.

While, in principle, it would be nice if we could get everyone to agree to that, there's good evidence to suggest that people have a certain number of kids based on economic circumstances, and only the most brutally coercive methods will alter that behaviour. You might be able to set up some system of financial incentives for the purpose, but raising living standards seems to be the most viable long-term solution.

[Ravens_cry]

Even then, it still takes so much energy to move so much mass up so much against a gravitational gradient. Moving a significant amount of the population, as well as all the diverse, and heavy, infrastructure to support that life, will take buttloads of energy, even if such devices, as I hope, become feasible.

[Zeful]

Bleh. This is probably coming across as a little too alarmist.

It's not alarmist to point out the huge, gaping holes in people's theories. The meritocracy Water Bear was talking about sharply divides the "haves" and "have nots" into a master and slave class, all around who can initially buy the best upgrades the soonest. I don't see the merit of supporting the development of such a society.

Again, I'm reasonably confident that the cost of treatments like this could be brought well down over the next decades, and the costs aren't vast compared to what you need to invest in, e.g, education regardless. (Even if I believe that our educational systems could stand vast improvement in regards to efficiency.*)

It's true that old scientists rarely discard their favourite theories, but strictly speaking, we don't know if that's not just another side-effect of aging. If you can cure people of wrinkles, maybe you can cure them of intransigence.


* The basic philosophy of the system appears to be "you can lead a horse to water, then dunk their head repeatedly in the trough until they drink, damnit."

And the other reason I don't like transhumanism, the treatment of it as a no-limits fallacy by it's supporters. Yeah the costs for the treatments might go down, but considering the liability of publicly owned corporations to their shareholders, it might not drop fast enough to make Water Bear's Meritocracy not an inherent slave-holding society (even then I honestly doubt that even in the best case there wouldn't be a slave class, some dumbass might actually start modifying up some sex slaves with the tech). Maybe you can cure intrasigence, but it's just as possible it's a side effect to the way the brain is structured to hold memory, and thus impossible to cure in concern to biology.

The, "no we can fix that," is actually kind of annoying, because it's dismissing otherwise valid arguments for holding fallacious beliefs.

[warty goblin]

Conceivably. Of course, there are regions of the world where it's hard to imagine the violence getting much worse, and those are already pretty damn unequal. Thankfully, they don't have functional nukes.

Yet. Or rather no place with nukes has gone totally tits-up yet. Anyway, the nuclear issue is in some ways secondary; violence is violence after all. The governing metric for that should be harm caused, not how likely it is to affect rich white first world people.

Yeah... but by that logic, if the prevailing environmental conditions happen to feature, for example, pre-implantation genetic diagnosis and a combination of cultural values and government policy that expressly discourage obesity... then that is likely to have an impact on the proportion of conceptions that make it to reproductive maturity. And if we have to abandon all value judgements on the basis that 'evolution doesn't have a goal in mind', then neither do we have any basis for condemning this scenario.

Allow me to clarify; I'm not arguing that we should abandon all value judgments. Really quite the opposite in fact. I'm arguing that we shouldn't use evolution as a basis for our value judgments. There are two reasons for this: firstly as I pointed out, evolution doesn't have human values, so using it to justify them seems facile. Secondly, the use of evolution as a basis for moral arguments about the treatment of people does not have a good history. There's a reason eugenics is a dirty word.

If, by contrast, there are value judgements we can make independently of naturalistic arguments about default behaviour, then perhaps it is fair to say that the human organism leaves some margin for improvement.

No disagreement from me. Where the improvement gets questionable is that we're the ones doing the improving in this scenario. One has to consider the possibility that instead of rectifying these flaws, we simply perpetuate and exaggerate them. See the genetic aristocracy we had come up a bit ago. That's not making humanity 'better,' it's reversing six hundred years of social progress in the name of science. Which makes it no better than the same system based on any other screwed up justification.

Yeah, but have you considered the transport cost reductions if we ever get, say, space elevators working? (I personally reckon launch loops are more promising- you don't need fancy new materials, could get transport costs potentially down to 3 dollars per kilo, and a much longer operating life.)

You missed my point: this was absolute bare minimum energy requirement, not financial cost. Unless conservation of energy becomes invalid, it will still hold as a lower limit. It's not a matter of technology, beating this number is physically impossible.

While, in principle, it would be nice if we could get everyone to agree to that, there's good evidence to suggest that people have a certain number of kids based on economic circumstances, and only the most brutally coercive methods will alter that behavior. You might be able to set up some system of financial incentives for the purpose, but raising living standards seems to be the most viable long-term solution.

The problem with raising living standards is that although it reduces or eliminates population growth, the population you do have consumes more; probably more than offset in population would have.

The world needs fewer people in it, and those people need to consume less.

[Carry2]

I say we should look at potential pitfall very carefully before we start dividing ourselves into different species based on wealth and power.

It's not alarmist to point out the huge, gaping holes in people's theories. The meritocracy Water Bear was talking about sharply divides the "haves" and "have nots" into a master and slave class, all around who can initially buy the best upgrades the soonest. I don't see the merit of supporting the development of such a society.

What is your plan, then, exactly? Ban all research into the subject and see what happens when some tin-pot dictator with fewer scruples than you charges ahead regardless? What happens when the rich and the transnationals flee to whatever tax haven permits negligibly-regulated gene-tailoring? What happens when the Triads or the Mafia or the Mexican Cartels decide to diversify their illegal-but-hugely-profitable business portfolios? Have we had any success at stopping this sort of thing lately?

This argument is idiotic. You might as well vie against education on the basis that the rich can afford to go to Harvard, or healthcare on the basis that personal physicians exist, or sanitation because the rich get to live in the countryside. Make it public. Make it cheap. And maybe the poor will stand a chance.

Maybe you can cure intrasigence, but it's just as possible it's a side effect to the way the brain is structured to hold memory, and thus impossible to cure in concern to biology.

As opposed to what? The system where you dispose of these memories by letting the brain containing them die of alzheimers? If I have to choose between eidetic recall and the ability to reformulate my beliefs when I'm 90, I'll pick the latter in a heartbeat.

[jseah]

You missed my point: this was absolute bare minimum energy requirement, not financial cost. Unless conservation of energy becomes invalid, it will still hold as a lower limit. It's not a matter of technology, beating this number is physically impossible.

Stuff going down can pull stuff coming up. Mine an asteroid, send down a load of metals to pull up some passengers.

You'll need to do this with a space elevator anyway since there's a problem of angular momentum (if you send stuff up or down an Elevator one way, the end will lag or advance in its GEO orbit).

[Carry2]

Yet. Or rather no place with nukes has gone totally tits-up yet. Anyway, the nuclear issue is in some ways secondary; violence is violence after all. The governing metric for that should be harm caused, not how likely it is to affect rich white first world people.

Well, in theory, rich white people who don't need to spend as much on healthcare and social services at home could have more to spend on 3rd-world charity.

No disagreement from me. Where the improvement gets questionable is that we're the ones doing the improving in this scenario. One has to consider the possibility that instead of rectifying these flaws, we simply perpetuate and exaggerate them.

You're right. We should let the Yakuza do it instead.

You missed my point: this was absolute bare minimum energy requirement, not financial cost. Unless conservation of energy becomes invalid, it will still hold as a lower limit. It's not a matter of technology, beating this number is physically impossible.

I'd appreciate a link to the original thread where you came up with this figure, but offhand, 3 dollars per kilo for a 5-tonne ship getting, say, a dozen people offworld doesn't sound like an exorbitant sum of energy.

Of course, this is all academic for the time being- it's not like anywhere but here will be livable for at least another 50 years, and maybe not for centuries.

The problem with raising living standards is that although it reduces or eliminates population growth, the population you do have consumes more; probably more than offset in population would have...

I don't think that's necessarily the case. Food supplies, of course, are a hard lower bound on resource consumption, but between GM crops, hydroponics and a shift to primarily-vegetarian lifestyles, that should be solvable. Improving healthcare, education and governance is a matter of getting the right skills in place. And improvements in manufacturing, durability and service efficiency allow you to provide consumer goods more cheaply.

*shrugs* Again, in principle. If you have a better plan for persuading the population of bangladesh to not have babies, I'm open to suggestions.

[Zeful]

What is your plan, then, exactly? Ban all research into the subject and see what happens when some tin-pot dictator with fewer scruples than you charges ahead regardless? What happens when the rich and the transnationals flee to whatever tax haven permits negligibly-regulated gene-tailoring? What happens when the Triads or the Mafia or the Mexican Cartels decide to diversify their illegal-but-hugely-profitable business portfolios? Have we had any success at stopping this sort of thing lately?

Strawman. Did I stay stop developing any of that tech? No, I didn't. I just pointed out that one example of a society is complete and utter **** from a human's rights prospective. And it is. Water Bear's Meritocracy (oh hey, look a definitive restrictive qualifier, I must be talking about transhumanism in general), based on literally every value we as a modern society is the kind of place we'd treat as abominable, and have the populace vying in public forums to have nothing to do with it.

This argument is idiotic. You might as well vie against education on the basis that the rich can afford to go to Harvard, or healthcare on the basis that personal physicians exist, or sanitation because the rich get to live in the countryside. Make it public. Make it cheap. And maybe the poor will stand a chance.

You want to go here? Fine: Your stance is idiotic, predicated on the belief that the corporations that inevitably develops this technology won't be mandated to make the maximum amount of profit from it due to shareholders. Corporate society will not make it cheap enough for the poor to make use of it without MASSIVE government subsidies. Which incidently, will take 10-15 years before the technology is proven enough to warrant government subsidies (oh, and isn't considered a "luxury" procedure like, say... breast implants or more analogously, botox injections), which concerning Water Bear's Meritocracy (again, a qualifier; must be talking transhumanism in general again) is long enough for there to be born an entire generation of people who's merit is only that as slaves. But then how dare I hold Human Rights as a thing of value; transhumanism makes it okay to violate it regularly for personal comfort. Why bother doing anything yourself when you can have a intentionally retarded slave do it for you?

As opposed to what? The system where you dispose of these memories by letting the brain containing them die of alzheimers? If I have to choose between eidetic recall and the ability to reformulate my beliefs when I'm 90, I'll pick the latter in a heartbeat.

Again, strawman. That's not what I said. I only pointed out that saying "transhumanism/science has a cure for everything" is a no limits fallacy, because it is. That line was part of a paragraph pointing out that maybe a problem CAN'T BE SOLVED in a way that is functional. Our brains reinforce memories through recall, building more and more neural brides between areas of the brain that hold oft-recalled information. It's like a hard drive that self optimizes on a fundamental hardware level to make accessing a particular bit set faster. How can you solve that in a way that doesn't reset the brain to it's earliest stages, incidently wiping out all memories?

[Carry2]

You want to go here? Fine: Your stance is idiotic, predicated on the belief that the corporations that inevitably develops this technology won't be mandated to make the maximum amount of profit from it due to shareholders. Corporate society will not make it cheap enough for the poor to make use of it without MASSIVE government subsidies. Which incidently, will take 10-15 years before the technology is proven enough to warrant government subsidies...

It's going to take 10-15 years before this technology moves beyond curing the most glaringly disabilities, and 20-25 years before the recipients of gene- tailoring will actually enter the workforce. Hopefully even governments can react on that timescale. (Though I was pessimistic about it earlier in the thread. Hmm.)

Well, unless a single corporation manages to establish a complete monopoly on the market- which is about as tenable as a single government managing to ban all research in the area- there is an established historical trend for these services to get steadily cheaper, because they do, in fact, make more money on high volume with low margins. 20 years ago mobile phones weighed kilos and cost thousands, but nowadays even a significant proportion of Somalia has the things.

Again, strawman. That's not what I said. I only pointed out that saying "transhumanism/science has a cure for everything" is a no limits fallacy, because it is.

I don't disagree with that assessment, but when you reply to a specific post of mine it gives me the immediate impression that you are taking issue with specific things that I said. I don't recall saying that gene tailoring doesn't have limits or tradeoffs. But if I misinterpreted your statement, my apologies.

[Water_Bear]

It seems like I've touched some kind of nerve here, so I'm curious; what exactly is the objection to concentrating power in the hands of people most capable of using it? What would your preferred alternative be?

I've always assumed people didn't like the idea of aristocracy and plutocracy because, contrary to the assertions of aristocrats and plutocrats, there has never been any significant difference in innate ability between the ruling classes and the general population. There's no biological reason that an American is inherently any better suited to the post-industrial lifestyle than a Somalian, or that a man's labor should be valued at 125% of that of a woman, or that a person born into a political family is more capable of statesmanship, so these differences in opportunity only serve to hinder advancement of qualified people from the larger population and decrease the efficiency of the system. But if those innate differences along class lines do come into existence, then what justification is there for saying that the most capable people shouldn't have the most capability to enact change?

As far as I know, there's never been a classless society; even in small tribes or within families humans tend to create hierarchies, in much the same way that other Great Apes have been observed to do. And in human societies we have seen that the Pareto Principle tends to govern the distribution of wealth, and thus of all the abilities wealth implies. Unless we use genetic enhancement to change human nature to the extent that neither of these things are true, someone will be on top, and isn't it better for the species to have those people at least be competent?

[Ravens_cry]

What is the guarantee they will be?
Competent, maybe, in the sense of doing their jobs with a degree of efficiency, but people are bad enough when the perceive themselves to be better than others inherently, what about when they actually are?
After all, who's to govern what traits the rich and powerful choose for themselves and their children? It is, after all, in their interests to remain rich and powerful, and traits that enhance that may or may not actually make them better at actually benefiting society as a whole.

[Zeful]

I've always assumed people didn't like the idea of aristocracy and plutocracy because, contrary to the assertions of aristocrats and plutocrats, there has never been any significant difference in innate ability between the ruling classes and the general population.

Then you probably didn't pay attention in history class. There's a reason the adage is "absolute power corrupts absolutely" because aristocrats tended to be self-indulgent tyrants who abused their rights. And unless your system is going to remove such traits and make everyone in power benevolent (HAHAHAHAHA!!!) the same problems are going to exist.

then what justification is there for saying that the most capable people shouldn't have the most capability to enact change?

Because Gattaca. Being a slave for any reason is a terrible thing, but being a slave because of an arbitrary marker of "competence" which is, incidently not an objective measurement, is dehumanizing people for something they had no control over. It's based in logic that is reminiscent of the old slavery days only instead of black people it's all of the poor. But they didn't matter anyway. We could throw them out with the rest of the trash, maybe force them to live in an underground pit, drain them of whatever we can get from them, and then throw them away when we're done, whether they're alive or dead.