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[misko27]

Perhaps its only the perception that matters.

I guess we'll see. If Trump keeps up the song and dance for four years successfully, than yes. If he's forced into substance or everybody realizes he's a terrible person, than no. Regardless, actually reliable people in government will always be better than those who just look reliable, so seek that no matter what.

Well sure, but I mean that much is obvious. Obviously you want to always pick people who will do good things for the country regardless of other factors. But perhaps it is only the perception of how it gets done that matters. Or?

True enough, but I'll ask ya straight: what exactly is the nature of morality? Not necessarily what is moral, but what is its nature? Because you seem to know quite a bit about it, and I want to hear your thoughts.

Morality is the definition of when and why some actions should be accepted or not,

Oh? Accepted you say? So morality is proscriptive in nature? Can it also be prescriptive in nature? That is to say, can it also say "Thou shalt" instead of "Thou shalt not?" If it requires acceptance, does that mean it needs more than one individual? Can a person alone in nature be moral or immoral?

And regardless, when you say "accepted", why might something be accepted or not? Because they are considered "bad" for some reson, or something else? I would imagine that everything is accepted unless it isn't, so there is some criteria (and if I understand you, these criteria are equivalent to morality) but what is the criteria actually supposed to do?  Note that I don't want you to tell me a specific criterion (or morality), but what it means to be a criterion. What does a criteria have to do to count as morality; as opposed to being, say, objective judgements of value and worth? Like "this situation is good/bad" like you do later with the orphanage example? Do the criteria divide the world into good and bad? You say acceptable, but then what is supposed to be acceptable or unacceptable?

Put differently: what is the nature of good? You say, and please interject if I've at all misrepresented you, that morality is what is accepted or not. But what is a morality actually doing when it does that? Why is it dividing the world up? If I say that one criteria is "All that is purple is accepted, and all that is green is not". Is that a morality system? If not, why not? In short: what is a morality attempting to do when it divides up the world into the acceptable and unacceptable?

and is inherently subjective in nature (to the extent that even should an objective moral standard exist in the universe, all actual standards set by human beings will be subjective, including those that claim objectivity).

Isn't "all morality is subjective" an objective statement? It certainly doesn't leave mcuh room for other interpretation, so it certainly seems objective. But you can tell me.

As a concept it's really not more than that, and to say more would be to delve into actual discussions of the morality of certain actions.

We'll see.

Morality is inherently linked to actions by (for now) humans, however. An orphanage of children burning to death in an accident is wrong, but it's wrong in the sense that it's an undesirable occurrence because it was accidental. The moral dimension would only come in if, say, you had people opposed to righting the fault in electrical wiring that makes such fires likely.

Ahh! So then, what is "undesirable" is not a part of morality? So then, what is the difference between "undesirable" and "immoral"? You are stating - if I understand you - that bad things are not necessarily morally bad; so what is the difference? Does it depend on the morality in question, or are there some things which are beyond the question of morals? I don't quite understand your example which, I think, is intended to explain the difference: is an action immoral only if people are deciding or choosing things? Does that mean that only actions are immoral, or can there be immoral situations and objects?

Of course, if the likelihood of the fault causing a fire is so low that using the money for fault correcting for it instead of other things causes even further deaths and saves none, yadda yadda and now we're down the rabbit hole of magnitude and probability.

So then morality, if I understand you, is decision-making controlled by what is socially accepted? Or have I managed to misunderstand you?

It's only not controversial because I didn't start laying into my proto-first draft of how I'll become the next Marx.

And I thank you for that.

Well I know I'm enjoying this thread now. Please, anyone who happens to know a lot about morals as well, please chime in; as long as you'll stay long enough to explain it, at least. The biggest risk of this thread is the drive-by controversy where someone pops in, goes on about a bunch of very out-there and controversial stuff, and then just leaves, because that is synonomyous with trolling and is how BFEL eventually got banned. Just stay, chat, and be openminded.

[helmacon]

Unless you're talking about a full gene drive (which basically edits the genome every single generation), anything you make with CRISPR is still subject to selection pressures.

Mutations = change in genes
Selection = culling of genes

Mutations add variety, and selection takes it away, until the gene pool hits equilibrium around some "ideal point". The further you are from this equilibrium point, the higher the selection pressure that you face.

CRISPR is a type of mutation basically. And there are two outcomes:

#1 - small change: the equilibrium point is still where it was. The CRISPR mutant will therefore face stronger selection pressures which drive it back towards the old equilibrium point

#2 - large change: the genome is changed enough that it's in the realm of an entirely different equilibrium point. This is what you need to happen if you want some edit to remain stable. But the problem here is that many (vast numbers of) possible genomes will be in the "catchment" area that would get driven to the same equilibrium point. So the chance that changing one gene that made a new equilibrium point is actually on the equilibrium point is basically zero chance. So the organism will face increased selection pressures on all other genes to optimize itself for the new equilibrium point.

e.g. mutations do not reduce selection pressures, they increase them in almost all cases, because existing organisms have already reached an equilibrium point that minimizes selection pressure. Any mutation disrupts that equilibrium.

Evolution is not fast enough to make a difference at the rate we can change things with crispr. Also, we can change multiple organisim at once, and repeatedly. So we don't have to rely on traditional methods of propagation. Again, we can do it ourselves. 

The further you are from this equilibrium point, the higher the selection pressure that you face.

That's just plain wrong. Selection pressure has to do with how fit an organism is for the environment it is in. It has nothing to do with how similar an organism is to others of the same species.

[Reelya]

No you're not really up on the theory then.

Why do you think evolutionary change is slow? Mutations happen all the time, but we don't see them propagating. CRISPR is just a forced mutation btw.

The answer is that Natural Selection happens at every generation and it strongly weeds out mutations. It's actually a very rapid process, and it's the main reason you don't see "two-headed three-eyed dogs" and the like very often. it's not because "change" is slow, it's because natural selection is anti-change, in a big way.

So no, CRISPR isn't anything special, it's not up against "evolution": it's a mutation that's up against natural selection. And natural selection's job is to destroy mutations as fast as they appear.

Change is "slow" because natural selection has already done it's job and destroyed most mutations. So the genome is in equilibrium where mutations are minimized. Any time a new mutant appears its killed off pretty quickly. And this includes CRISPR-made mutants. 99.9% of mutants will not outcompete the exist equilibrium organisms, and there's no reason to think we'd automatically be able to buck those odds with CRISPR-made mutants.

[helmacon]

I can feel myself getting a little heated here, and i'm sure you feel somewhat the same so i'm going to invoke rule 1 in the OP. This will be my last argument post on this topic, and you may have the last post to respond to anything i've said and recap your argument.

But ... if you force something away from equilibrium, e.g. mutations which includes CRISPR, then it's now out of equilbrium. When something is out of equilibrium then selection pressures are going to very rapidly get the fuck rid of your added mutation, the same as it does for naturally occuring mutations.

Ok, look. Natural selection is only going to get rid of a mutation if it is actively detrimental to an organism's survival in some way. In nature, that is 99% of the (non silent) mutations that occur, because they are relatively random. They are suppressed because they hurt the chances of survival, not because it makes them different from the rest of the given species. Silent mutations (the majority of mutations) are rarely purged from the genome at all. Only about 5% of human DNA actualy codes for anything, the rest is just random crap that has accumulated.

If we make changes with crispr you can bet your ass they are going to be beneficial, because we are going to know exactly what we are doing before we do it. We would only do the beneficial ones.

Natural Selection is actually a very rapid process

No. It is not fast by any measurement. Even when you were talking about it here you were talking about a generational timescale. A (given, extremely rudimentary) crispr treatment can be designed and implemented in a matter of months. The pace of natural evolution is glacial in comparison to this.

No you're not really up on the theory then.

Don't do this. I really really really do understand what i'm talking about.

[Max™]

Morals are statements about how you think the world should behave; I think people shouldn't be allowed to murder babies because some vapid bimbo can't shut her trap about it, so I think going against vaccination is morally wrong.

Rights are statements about how you think people (and society) should treat you and how you should treat them; I don't think people have a right to attack the rest of society by slashing away at herd-immunity. I think people have a right to live free from disease, and I think as the whole we call society they have a right to insist upon things like vaccination or removal; you don't gotta vaccinate your kids, but you need to find somewhere away from the rest of society if you choose to do this. I am also a big fan of the right to maintain your body in the fashion you choose, so naturally I'm pissed at having a circumcision before I was even properly aware I existed. If someone is aware enough to express a right, they damn well fucking have it, but if they're not able to dismiss one, it should not be assumed that they lack it.

Freedoms are similar to rights, in that there is often overlap, but the distinction of positive and negative freedoms doesn't fit into the previous definition I gave of rights. I have the freedom to go down the street and watch birds, this is a positive freedom as it expresses a lack of limitations on certain behaviors or actions; I have the freedom to expect others to not try to punch me in the nose while I do this, which is a negative freedom as it expresses limitations on certain behaviors or actions in the context of others.

I'm pretty sure those are nonstandard usage (I think freedoms are often defined the opposite way as negative and positive liberties actually), it's just what the words seem like they should mean, but as they're probably not terribly controversial, I'll add this one:
Beliefs are not required for a human to function, you do not need to hold things to be true if you lack certainty in their truth, but that lack of confidence in something does not require one to hold them to be false either, degrees of confidence between true and false are quite possible.

[Reelya]

Ok, look. Natural selection is only going to get rid of a mutation if it is actively detrimental to an organism's survival in some way. In nature, that is 99% of the (non silent) mutations that occur, because they are relatively random. They are suppressed because they hurt the chances of survival, not because it makes them different from the rest of the given species. Silent mutations (the majority of mutations) are rarely purged from the genome at all. Only about 5% of human DNA actualy codes for anything, the rest is just random crap that has accumulated.

If we make changes with crispr you can bet your ass they are going to be beneficial, because we are going to know exactly what we are doing before we do it. We would only do the beneficial ones.

"Beneficial" can mean multiple things. e.g. we make changes to some crop to increase yield, but that crop is now weaker vs diseases and won't survive in the wild. Or we make chickens lay 1 billion eggs per year. Sucks to be that chicken: it's not beneficial for the chicken. A change we want in the phenotype doesn't necessarily mean the corresponsing genotype would have higher selectivity. Beneficial for us isn't the same as beneficial for the organism, and neither of those two things is necessarily the same as beneficial for the organism to reproduce.

As for changes that might benefit the organism, if you have a millions of year old organism, then any isolated change you make is extremely unlikely to make something that outbreeds the normal version, because those isolated changes would almost certainly have popped up as a mutant already, probably multiple times, and have "already had their chance".

"Genetic drift" is almost always genes that don't actually affect the qualities of the phenotype. And they wouldn't be things we'd care enough about to use CRISPR for anyway. We want functional changes. And functional changes have a far higher effect on survival than "average" mutations.

And like I said, if you make one change that happens to be beneficial, it needs to be in the zone of a different attractor (i.e. a new stable optimal organism completely), which would be a different germ line than the existing stable organisms. And it's basically certain that that would set off a cascade of related gene changes to tweak things for the new system.

So with CRISPR genes into a breeding population you have three outcomes :

#1 "good" change for us, but harms the organism's reproduction, natural selection tends to weed out the change

#2 "good" change for us, but neutral effect on the organism's reproduction. You'll get genetic drift and gradually the CRISPR gene would be overwritten with random junk.

#3 "good" change for us, positive effect on organism's reproduction. The organism would have to be sufficiently different to the original organism such that random mutations never actually created it in the first place. Will set off a cascade of other related mutations as the organism comes to a completely new equilibrium point. So this type will "stick" but they have to be fairly big changes and they will cause unexpected things, too, since you're heading into unknown territory.

[Starver]

I can feel myself getting a little heated here, and i'm sure you feel somewhat the same so i'm going to invoke rule 1 in the OP. This will be my last argument post on this topic, and you may have the last post to respond to anything i've said and recap your argument.

I feel a bit bad for wading in at all, then, but a couple of teensy-weensy things...

Only about 5% of human DNA actualy codes for anything, the rest is just random crap that has accumulated.

Nobody really knows what the <insert latest interpretation here>% of the DNA (called 'junk') is in the grand scheme of things.  Between bits suspected to be 'ionisation sinks', to give protective effects to the rest, and other less directly tested and more esoteric estimations of the utility, there's obviously some usefulness to the 'junk', or else selection would not have maintained a system that requires twenty times more DNA to be replicated at every cell division (not just at conception and in gestation but, for many differentiated adult cells, throughout a person's life) - a huge resource-gobbler. Even if only the gamete-to gamete production of cell lines directly carries the junk between generations, they only do that because the rest of the organism transports them through time and space towards the opportunity to participate in creating the next generation, and that's a lot of so-called-junk being replicated along the way.

If we make changes with crispr you can bet your ass they are going to be beneficial, because we are going to know exactly what we are doing before we do it.

Much as generating a 'slimline' genome (in this instance, it was a count of the number of genes, rather than base-pairs, that was the aim, and "junk" isn't mentioned, so I'm not sure how much they messed with that) may ruin some heretofore useful junkDNA/proteome interaction, saying that we will not break things badly at some level by doing anything but the simplest of substitutions. Correcting a known disabling base-flip is going to be 'simple', anything leading to transhumanism of any significant worth, less so.

We would only do with the beneficial ones.

We would only try the beneficial ones.

Don't do this. I really really really do understand what i'm talking about.

Perhaps more than me (I'm sure Reelya knows more than I do about the current state of research, so why not you, also?) but I do see some room for improvement, or at least cautious conservatism, in your more wildly optimistic predictions.

Oh, look, Reelya has replied. I'll read that (and maybe disagree, in turn?) momentarily...

[Reelya]

Let me pop this here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punctuated_equilibrium

Scientists debunked the idea of "gradual" evolution almost 50 years ago. Evolution occurs in alternating periods of stasis and rapid adaptation (when things change).

Stasis occurs when a species is in a good environment: natural selection removes outliers, and no net change occurs for very long periods.

But when in a bad environment, everyone is an outlier. This has several effects. Mutants are much more likely to be beneficial or neutral than before, there's no selection pressure "holding" the genome near the old genome's form, and existing genetic variation comes into play. Some genes that were marginally bad, or neutral, might become marginally good. And on top of that, genetics is a huge parallel processing task that mixes the solutions together using sexual reproduction, so a "good" solution to the new problem can in fact spread rapidly through the population.

Speciation events are triggered by a change in the niche that the organism fills, and they are associated with a rapid gene shift over to some new form. So, there's nothing slow about the speed at which selection works. It only appears so because already-optimized species are being forced into stasis by it. It's a much more powerful and fast-acting force than mutation.

[misko27]

Interesting! I like discussion. Very well thought out, but I am unfortunately not very good at understanding morality myself, so I will have to take the lead from you, Max (and MSH if he gets back to me).

Morals are statements about how you think the world should behave; I think people shouldn't be allowed to murder babies because some vapid bimbo can't shut her trap about it, so I think going against vaccination is morally wrong.

Morals are how the world should behave? Interesting, interesting. So more. You say "should". But this implies a great deal, doesn't it? It implies that there are many possible states the world (or some subset of the world, like a situation) could be in, and only one of those states are moral; do I understand you properly? But here is a question: let us say that I believe that orange is the best color (obviously blue is the best color, but for the purposes of this thought let's pretend I thought otherwise). And let's say that I believed that walls should be orange. Is that a moral judgement, or not? If it can be a moral judgement, are there moralities where it is possible for me to both believe that walls should be orange, but not believe that that is a moral judgment? If it is possible, then there is some issue with "should" isn't there? The word might be too broad. I might suggest - and call me out if I say differently than what you believe - that not every "should" is necessarily about morality. But if it isn't, then what seperates a moral "should" from a non-moral "should"?

Rights are statements about how you think people (and society) should treat you and how you should treat them ... If someone is aware enough to express a right, they damn well fucking have it, but if they're not able to dismiss one, it should not be assumed that they lack it.

Also interesting. Tell me, was your repeated use of the word "you" in the first sentence deliberate? If so, than that seems to imply that the people can simply decide they have certain rights; is that what you meant? Wouldn't that mean that, say, people can decide that they have the right to not vaccinate? And regardless, I need you to explain everything after "but if they're not able to dismiss". I don't understand this, so please help me out a bit. Rights exist only if people imagine they do, right? Then that means that rights must not exist until people imagine them, surely? The former part of your paragraph seems to discuss rights as something anyone could imagine, while the latter seems to insist that there are certain rights that exist whether or not someone is aware of the. But which is it? If I've at all misunderstood something you've written, please explain further so I can understand you better.

And, for what it is worth, my earlier questions about "should" apply here as well.

Freedoms are similar to rights, in that there is often overlap, but the distinction of positive and negative freedoms doesn't fit into the previous definition I gave of rights. I have the freedom to go down the street and watch birds, this is a positive freedom as it expresses a lack of limitations on certain behaviors or actions; I have the freedom to expect others to not try to punch me in the nose while I do this, which is a negative freedom as it expresses limitations on certain behaviors or actions in the context of others.

When you say freedom, do you mean freedom in the physical sense? Freedom being "I have unlocked doors and am able to walk on my two-feet, therefore I can walk outside if I so choose" and "I am not in any immediate danger, therefore I am free from immediate danger", or does freedom mean something else as well? If freedom is about more than literal physical circumstance, what defines that sort of freedom? How might I know that this is a freedom I have? Your definition of freedom fits quite well with the literal, but, unless I've missed something, you didn't really define freedom in the same way you defined rights?

I'm pretty sure those are nonstandard usage (I think freedoms are often defined the opposite way as negative and positive liberties actually), it's just what the words seem like they should mean, but as they're probably not terribly controversial, I'll add this one:

Is this the same moral-defining "should" from before?

Beliefs are not required for a human to function, you do not need to hold things to be true if you lack certainty in their truth, but that lack of confidence in something does not require one to hold them to be false either, degrees of confidence between true and false are quite possible.

Interesting. You say beliefs are not required for function? Then I will ask something by way of example: Imagine that we had a man with no beliefs at all. He had certain things which, as you say, he held some degree of confidence in, but he believed in absolutely nothing! When he went to sleep at night, he believed there was a non-zero chance that he would wake up naked in a field, his house having disappeared as an illusion. Certainly, not a very large chance at all, but it was there. The proper scientific gentlemen! But having constructed this fellow (whom I will name Jeremy for no reason at all), I find myself wondering a few questions about him. First, how does he decide? He believes in nothing at all, after all, only realms of probability. But in order to make a decision, mustn't Jeremy, like a quantum particle, collapse from a realm of possible beliefs into a single, concrete position? Does he disbelieve himself even during the act and moment of making a choice or decision? How is that possible? Forgive me for not being able to understand, but to disbelieve your decisions during the actual decision, isn't that equivalent to doubting your own thoughts? How is that even possible? Doesn't such a doubter at least believe in himself as a mind which doubts? I mean, I'm sure it's possible that he believes he disbelieves in his own thoughts; but then, he has to believe that he is disbelieving something.

And second, how could such a doubter go through life? In addition to disbeliving himself and his own disbelief, wouldn't Jeremy also disbelieve cause-and-effect as well? It is as this point that I wish to suggest that while Jeremy is the sort of person who one could force oneself to become, how would a babe do it? Jeremy can handle himself due to his experience, but how is it possible that a newborn might learn all the things necessary in life as to become functional without truly believing anything, and while also doubting causation itself? You say that belief is not necessary for humans; isn't it at least necessary for newborns? Or is there some way of it that I've not conceived of yet? I do apologize, and thank you in advance for your patience in helping me to undersand.

[Reelya]

I already accounted for that when I mentioned that people in those societies don't tend to produce enough babies to replace themselves. At some point that will balance out, obviously.

So the selection pressures are different, but they still exist, and perhaps stronger than ever. Small families suggest that is the case. Individual odds of breeding have in fact never been lower, which means that any genes which correlate with breeding in any way will face strong selection pressures.

Think about men. Men can only procreate by convincing a woman to mate with them. Any genes that positively influence a man's chance to breed are going to have strong positive selection, especially given that the "mating market" is in fact hyper-competitive in the modern world. While we've cured a bunch of diseases, on the other hand you used to be pretty much guaranteed a marriage and therefore a family. Not any more. Now you have to fight to get that. i.e. competitive selection pressure.

And some men and women don't want children, yet in the "old days" that wasn't accepted: society mostly forced you to get married and start a family. Now, since it's a choice, any genes that influence that choice are now facing stronger selection pressures than they did before. So the ironic net result of sexual liberation is that people who aren't interested in children are now excluded from the gene pool in ways they weren't allowed to be in the past. That should in fact shift the gene pool towards only "enthusiastic breeders" since "non-enthusiastic breeders" are self-selecting themselves out of the gene pool.

So, it's definitely arguable that reproductive choice is itself leading to stronger selection pressures than existed before. We might think we've transcended evolution but that's not the case.

[McTraveller]

So why is preserving the human race a desirable goal anyway? That is - why should we care about the future generations? What's wrong with just using all the resources we can to live the most luxurious life we can, the future be damned?

[Sergarr]

So why is preserving the human race a desirable goal anyway? That is - why should we care about the future generations? What's wrong with just using all the resources we can to live the most luxurious life we can, the future be damned?

The negentropy score for our universe won't be as high as possible, duh.

[SalmonGod]

Most unpopular/controversial post that will ever be in this thread:

Nickelback doesn't deserve the meme-ified level of hatred they get, and I don't even understand how that got rolling in the first place.  There's far, far worse music out there in popular music scenes.  Yeah, they have a "generic" sound, which I take to simply mean genre-pure with simple song structures... but there's nothing inherently wrong with that, and there are bands I can think of that are very well respected for the same thing.

[itisnotlogical]

Agreed. Worse music has become inexplicably popular in the last two years than anything Nickelback ever made.

[Frumple]

In complete honesty, I can never actually remember who those guys are. Seem to recall it being some kind of boy band, but...

That said, the easiest stuff to latch on to isn't the worst material, but the stuff that's good enough to be well known -- particularly if it's fairly prolific in terms of air time -- but not good enough to be much more than that. Takes something that people know of and can fight over, basically, not just something such that everyone that hears someone speak ill of it just kinda' looks at the people speaking with a shrug and a "Yeah?"