@socialjusticemunchkin, you were recently talking about a libertarian approach to human genetic engineering, perhaps you would be interested in the dialogue conducted by @davidsevera under way at veracities.online on this very subject.
Given the number of libertarians and libertarian-leaning folk in these parts I am curious how the precautionary side of the debate will be received and whether anyone is willing to jump in and play devil’s advocate!
I sorta would want to argue about this, but my issues are about possible negative consequences rather than certainties.
In truth, I don’t think it should be categorically forbidden, but think some caution is in order. One big issue is that the argument here is over a hypothetical we’re still a not at with consequences that won’t become apparent for a while. Honestly, the thing I would most want is for people not to oversell it.
Precautiones is all about the precautionary principle, after all! :)
There are some possible tragedy of the commons effects, as with existing issues like sex-selective abortion, which is just an extreme case of parents exercising choice over the genetics of their children.
(Also accidentally causing human extinction when parents universally choose mutations which boost IQ by ten points but also turn out to cause sterility, oops).
Yeah, one the big ones is: “We still don’t really understand the genome or the mind very well, please don’t accidentally make an entire generation of psychopaths“
It’s definitely too soon to know anything for certain. I think it’s interesting if not necessarily too useful at the moment to think through the potential pitfalls and probable dynamics as sort of a roadmap.
I’d imagine that, at least at first (and possibly for quite a long time?), any alterations to the genome would be made by selecting from within preexisting natural variation. Most personality traits are influenced by countless genes, so it’s not likely that we’d hit upon some weird combination of alleles that led to psychopathy, but there’s no guarantee of what might happen if we push the distribution of a given trait dramatically in one direction. Certainly I’d hope we have an understanding of how various pathologies arise well before making any major changes on a large scale, and I’d hope the research moves fairly slowly.
Libertes all the way.
My anarcho-utopian side says that letting children pursue grievances against their parents (instead of treating them as almost property like now) would be a far better solution than having men with guns kidnap or ransom people who try to do different things than what the mob wants them to do.
My cynical pragmatist side says: “Hello, convicted fucking criminal speaking; if the PoliceMob ransomed me for estradiol, how in hell would I trust them not to fuck up regulating genetic engineering just as horribly?” They can pry CRISPR from my cold, metallic upload hands once I can just sudo straight to my root account, but until then I will not surrender one inch of bodily autonomy.
Yes, there will be terrible consequences if we let parents CRISPR their kids freely, but the only way to reduce the obvious consequences would be to sweep them under the rug and turn them into even more terrible but just less-visible consequences with an FDA of genetic engineering. Sure, kids won’t have two heads, but neither will they have very useful augmentations. I’m not expecting anyone to start shooting bees or lightning from their fingertips so this is kind of a no-brainer.
Seriously, the things the system does to trans people or drug users are very illuminating of how it “wants” to treat all unpopular self-modifications and exercisings of bodily autonomy: with brutal repression and giving in only as little as it can. I won’t make its job one bit easier by consenting to such things instead of resisting all the way. I trust a free society to do better than the state, because the bar is set so low I’d need the help of an oil company to reach it (snark intended).
Or alternatively I could bring in an ultra-cynical third view: “obstructiones” (or something like that).
It would aim to stall the government and legitimate insurers’ involvement in genetic engineering as much as possible so that the statist-controlled parts of society don’t fuck everyone over with it, while not allowing the tech to be banned entirely but just shifted underground and limited to people who have an interest and an opportunity in using it.
For example, right now people who want to obtain modafinil can buy it from India for relatively non-obscene prices, or get a prescription from some cooperative doctor, but the system doesn’t make people use modafinil routinely or try to eradicate it altogether.
The obvious downside would be the increase in inequality when only tech-savvy early adopters can CRISPR their kids, but if one has optimistic agorist tendencies or a very bleak view of humanity as a whole it is at least one possible option.
In fact, I’d expect that this is basically what precautiones would degenerate into in reality unless the enforcers want to get really super-oppressive (which I do think is a possibility though, because the mob gets really riled over this); biohackers currently implant magnets etc. without “proper” medical supervision and it hasn’t exactly stopped us (okay, not having easy access to anaesthetics stopped me from getting a finger magnet because I’m a wimp, but the person I live with does have one) from doing such things, and when technology becomes cheaper and more easily available, the underground would survive if it isn’t treated in an outright eradicatory way.
(via socialjusticemunchkin)
2 months ago · 23 notes · source: argumate · .permalink
almostcoralchaos reblogged this from argumate
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socialjusticemunchkin reblogged this from ilzolende and added:Yes, terrible outcomes would result because terrible outcomes always result, but if parents effectively have to have...
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argumate liked this- ilzolende reblogged this from socialjusticemunchkin and added:
I like this idea. However, I seriously doubt the average parent can afford to cover the appropriate cost for giving...
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collapsedsquid reblogged this from davidsevera and added:Variation is part of the problem actually, it can lead to inconsistent response to genetic changes. When you combine...
davidsevera reblogged this from collapsedsquid and added:It’s definitely too soon to know anything for certain. I think it’s interesting if not necessarily too useful at the...
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- argumate reblogged this from collapsedsquid and added:
Precautiones is all about the precautionary principle, after all! :)There are some possible tragedy of the commons...
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