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[Earthquake Damage]

Who funds existing NGOs? Who funds the UN's aid programs? Where do we get the money to do everything else? Of course it depends on how difficult the therapy in question is. One injection, or weeks in the hospital?

Fine.  We'll handwave the cost.  Surely someone will pay for it, right?  It is for the common good and all.

[sonerohi]

Common good is far too close to Communism for American tastes. You Europeans might manage shit, but it comes right back down to commerce here.

[Bauglir]

-snip-

[Aqizzar]

If the intellectual gulf between modified humans and unmodified becomes so sharply, shockingly great that the unmodified can't possibly hope to compete, then, well, that's up to the modified humans to solve isn't it? One hopes that they have a sense of mercy, although "caste" implies the Hindu system in which upward mobility is made impossible between generations. Genetic advancement proceeding so fast that the previous generation can't hope to compete with the new kids? That's some good fiction, there. I'd spend a portion of every day ROFLing if this actually happened.

If it's not, how is that in any way different from the status quo? To most people, there'd be just a whole lot more geniuses around.

That's another thing.  You refuse to even consider that things might not play out the way you hope, and that bad consequences could come of massive genetic alteration of generations-yet-unborn.  I refer you again to Thiel, or any other self-made asshole in the world, as proof that being smart does not make a person nice.  And then, just to tack back toward realism, accept that there might be a failure-state, which would be no better than the present day, apparently.  Somehow, that doesn't strike you as both a problem, and horribly naive?

[Duke 2.0]

Should but won't. We can crush malaria within a relatively brief time if we felt like it. But we don't.

Welcome to capitalism.

Capitalism has nothing to do with it. We just understand that while we could coat the world in a layer of DDT thick enough to make a new layer for those cut away Earth models to destroy all illnesses the side effects of everything else involved make it a stupid thing to do. All we can do is use whatever halfassed methods of protecting massive areas of underdeveloped society we can until we hopefully by chance discover a method of killing it off without killing off everything else.

 And this seems strangely on-topic with the thread, but I know I'm not nearly good enough at debating to stay here beyond a post about some side topic.

[Criptfeind]

You don't see accountants making do without computers these days.

Tell that to my accounting teacher. 

[G-Flex]

Dunno where you're getting the "no regulation" line, G-Flex. It's already regulated (in the US) by the FDA and CBER.

• Is it regulated well/sanely?
• I was arguing against the attitude that there's nothing about it to fear, which kind of flies in the face of the strict regulations in place against genetic modifications of human beings.

Genetic advancement proceeding so fast that the previous generation can't hope to compete with the new kids? That's some good fiction, there. I'd spend a portion of every day ROFLing if this actually happened.

Yeah, it's pretty inconceivable that new technology might be available to the rich and educated before it's available to the poor and ill-informed, and that said technology could cause feedback in the sense by giving their already-rich kids even more of a leg up than they already have.

[Aqizzar]

And this seems strangely on-topic with the thread, but I know I'm not nearly good enough at debating to stay here beyond a post about some side topic.

Hey, don't be afraid to chime in if you think there's a point to make.  I don't know a damn thing about this material, and I made the thread.

You don't see accountants making do without computers these days.

Tell that to my accounting teacher. 

As the old saying goes, those who can't do...

[Eagleon]

I pretty much gave up presenting a reasonable side of the transhumanist opinion. People like Eugenitor will almost certainly push back self-modification decades in their refusal to consider basic ethical questions, because it attracts more attention than "Hey, I'd like to be able to breathe underwater someday, that'd be cool eh?" and gets people riled up nuclear-dev winter style.

Basically, I agree there are problems with GM of embryonic humans, especially concerning brain development. I don't think it should be touched until we have simulation capability for it, which is basically post-singularity crap, and very likely impractical even then. It's going to be a fucked up time when this stuff starts up seriously in less regulated areas, but it always has been. I don't think there's any stopping it, at most you can slow and prolong things. The problem is, that's getting downright dangerous when you consider the destructive potential of some of the technology emerging now. We have a pretty short window, unless we're extremely lucky and no one thinks to use it :/

[Criptfeind]

As the old saying goes, those who can't do...

She was a accountant for a major firm for like 15 years before she became a teacher.

She can do.

Edit: My sociology teacher on the other hand just gave everyone in class a bad grade because "we did not pay attention to the instructions."

If everyone but you is saying they do not make sense...

[Eugenitor]

Having one group of people outpace another group of people is only a bad consequence when you compare the two groups. What do the world's poor care if Westerners start altering themselves? Or is there going to be some tiered pricing system where $100k gets you an improved embryo but $1M gets you Superkid, so the middle class's Little Johnny can't compete with the princelings? That's actually.. pretty damn silly. And unimaginably unethical.

But it's just so utterly selfish to go "There's no way that rich kid can be made a genius! Everyone else won't be able to compete!" Really? Okay, so they can't compete.. and? He might discover a final cure for HIV.

A failure state would be what? Nothing actually happens? Okay, it didn't do what we wanted it to. We've learned something in the attempt and we've wasted more on worse ends. Maybe having the modified, corrupted-absolutely super-elite break out their maniacal laughter, go "lol noobs", and exterminate everyone else with as many infectious diseases as they could whip up? Mmm, smell that fresh omnicide. I'll be over here listening to the Gerry the Germ .SID.

Okay, back to reality. Human genetic improvement, if it's worth the name, means that some people end up genetically better than others, at least for a while, despite efforts to mitigate it. Which is the way things are already. We just won't be able to pretend anymore.

[Vactor]

just like all the best and brightest wealthy children that received top notch educations went on to solve all the world's needs out of the goodness of their hearts by developing mortgage derivatives.

[G-Flex]

Having one group of people outpace another group of people is only a bad consequence when you compare the two groups. What do the world's poor care if Westerners start altering themselves?

In case you haven't noticed, we live in a rapidly globalizing economy right now. What Westerners do affects the world's poor.

But it's just so utterly selfish to go "There's no way that rich kid can be made a genius! Everyone else won't be able to compete!" Really? Okay, so they can't compete.. and? He might discover a final cure for HIV.

Then unfuck the economic situation such that it's available to everyone. If that takes a little extra time, so be it. We need to do that regardless.

A failure state would be what? Nothing actually happens? Okay, it didn't do what we wanted it to. We've learned something in the attempt and we've wasted more on worse ends. Maybe having the modified, corrupted-absolutely super-elite break out their maniacal laughter, go "lol noobs", and exterminate everyone else with as many infectious diseases as they could whip up? Mmm, smell that fresh omnicide. I'll be over here listening to the Gerry the Germ .SID.

What the fuck? I wasn't trying to envision some kind of weird omnicidal maniac or genocide or any other doomsday situation. I'm talking about the very real possibility that the typical methods of economic injustice would get ingrained into the gene pool itself, in a designed fashion, and that would be a bad thing. The "failure state" is an era of socioeconomic injustice far in advance of anything we currently know.

As I was getting at above, if we're going to be modifying the gene pool of the human race, we need to wait until not only is the technology proven, but the worldwide (and more local) economic situation is such that it is accessible to everyone, and people around the world are generally on more equal footing.

[LordNagash]

But it's just so utterly selfish to go "There's no way that rich kid can be made a genius! Everyone else won't be able to compete!" Really? Okay, so they can't compete.. and?

Guys it's okay, the genetically engineered superman might do something good with his advantage and therefore it's stupid to consider any negative effects that could possibly arise

[Grakelin]

I knew, as soon as I started reading the post, that Nikov was going to stick up for the guy.

And he did.