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More Human Than Human
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 More Human Than Humanwww.theguardian.com Even healthy couples will opt for Groper’s federally funded IVF if they can select the best from a hundred viable embryos. |
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But even apart from the nature/nurture debate about intelligence, much more fundamental questions need to be addressed. The 'Evil Genius' meme is not purely fiction; I would suggest that there are other qualities that are much more desirable, both for the individual and for the society that individual. Unfortunately, every 'desirable' quality seems to be matched with an undesirable concomitant. Too often 'intelligence' is linked with emotional flaws, 'creativity' is linked to depression or psychosis, etc. Perhaps a good case can be made for culling embryos that actually manifest severe problems, but I would be extremely reluctant to actively select for any 'positive' traits. And certainly not try to pre-emptively eliminate 'potentially undesirable' traits that provide genetic diversity. And there is always the social reality that technology serves those who control it. Is this opening the way for the 'Eloi' of H.G.Wells? Are we at risk of 'superior blood lines' becoming genetically ingrained and the concept of egalitarianism being a dead letter? Progress is necessary; but it needs to be critiqued to the marrow and carefully regulated rather than allowed to happen laissez-faire. Progressives will always need conservatives to fact-check and peer-review their proposals. |
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Progress Look at self driving cars, for example. Do people die? Of course they do, and we learn from each mishap. If we charged out everything in advance we would never implement the technology, it would fester and rot on the drawing board like a moon shot absent the element of competition. We were able to land men on the moon because we took risks. People died, but people are always going to die and you just face that and do the best you can. The autonomous algorithms will never be perfect, but once they are better than the average human, as they are now, we can live with incremental improvements. I’m other words, there will already be fewer deaths with widespread adoption and as we learn from what mistakes remain it will just get better and better. What’s not to love? |
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bobspringett |
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Shiva This is the problem with any technology. Labour-saving devices in the Ukraine in the 1930's didn't make peasant life easier; it just reduced the need for live peasants so Stalin could let more of them starve. Robotics didn't make factory work easier; it just put more factory workers out of jobs. Household appliances didn't allow women to relax all day; it required them to join the paid workforce. And so it will always be, until laws concerning intellectual property are re-drafted to that they benefit society primarily, and reward the inventors only in proportion to the public benefit generated. But thanks for putting up a better 'Devil's Advocate' position than most could argue. |
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Require or Allow? We need genetic engineering. And we need to apply it to ourselves. There will always be natural born killers—the old fashioned gene mixing is unlikely to ever go out of style. If it does, so be it, I guess. But we have centuries before fretting about that. We have had test tube babies since the 1970s. Yet only a tiny fraction of present humanity was conceived in vitro. I listened to 60 Minutes interview the pope Sunday. While the church frowns on in vitro, he didn’t outright oppose it. He recommended adoption over fertilization and surrogacy, but if adoption is better then it should be easier and cheaper. Why such hurdles? The money spent could be better spent on child care. But the engineering will be very valuable to us. Remember, there will be failures, just as there were with thalidomide, fetal alcohol syndrome, crack babies, and so on. We’re always going to have that, but amniocentesis and other genetic testing sciences have helped us cut down on defects. Dump the trisomies and try, try again. |
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Guarantees |
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Mice. The other one I discovered was olive oil. I had a tuna fish can half full of half rancid olive oil I was using to drill screws into wood. Dip them in oil and they twist in so much easier. Anyway, I left the oil on a side support, several feet off the ground. A day later I came back to find it full of earwigs. These critters had to climb several feet to work their way into earwig heaven. So I discovered a wonderful way to reduce earwigs raising havoc in garden lettuce. I set one of these in my sister’s garden which quickly filled with tiny black ants also seeking the broad path to earwig heaven. Had to set a couple more for the earwigs as they lack affinity for ants. Put little cardboard roofs over the traps to keep out the sun and dirt. But man, something about the oil sure gums up their joints. And the scent is irresistible. |
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Extinction I watch these TikTok style videos where they ask the person on the street basic questions. What state is Utah located in? What is 2x3+1? What is the name of the country north of the US? It is scary the answers we get back. And Donald is the smartest person these folks can imagine voting for. We desperately need better humans. Chess is certainly a big help, but even here no guarantee for real world intelligence. We recognize the dangers of specialization, but there are more than enough Donald level intelligences out there. |
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Shiva 13:57 Members know me well enough to believe that I'm NOT a mouthpiece for the Vatican. But I think I have a reasonably good idea of how current Catholic theology ticks. I would welcome a response from someone who knows better. The first point to be kept in mind is that the Church places great emphasis on humans relating to each other as HUMANS, not commodities or as means to some other end. Technologies and other practices that interpose themselves in these 'fully human' relationships (such as birth control, etc) are deemed to detract from a genuinely human relationship. No human relationship is perfect, but that is very much the point of the Catholic perspective; we are to work through the hard bits, 'for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer,' etc. and not just in marriage. Although marriage is where these experiences are usually most intense, these same pressures apply to all our significant relationships. Hence reluctance by the church to approve of technological fixes that encourage us to take short cuts or 'easy way out' options instead of treating each other with utmost love and care, and REALISM. Even surrogacy, by treating the surrogate mother as a means to an end, is not approved even as it produces a human life that will be cared for and treasured. Where there are problems, then by all means they should be overcome if possible; but in a way that is as 'human' as possible. Yes, adoption should be as easy as possible, even supported; so long as the duty of care to the child is kept in mind. Surrogacy, if chosen, must be a genuine act of support, love and gratitude rather than a 'commercial transaction'. I can understand and even commend these principles underlying the Catholic position. But as in all things human, it loses something as soon as it becomes 'law', whether civil or canon. |
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Human Interaction Donald has promised free IVF for all Americans. Possibly whether they need it or not. I see absolutely nothing wrong with IVF. If a couple wants a child but cannot conceive on their own, such as bad fallopian tubes, why shouldn’t IVF be used? Sure, adoption is great, but that’s just someone else’s FAS baby. Some people want their own. If the missionary position isn’t working out, or can’t, why not IVF the little tyke? And many women can’t carry, so surrogacy makes perfect sense for them. Or some women might have careers as swimsuit models and a surrogate mother helps preserve their income. Some may just hate the thought of going through with a pregnancy, and if they can pay for a surrogate womb to take car3 of that for them, why not? Southern belles used to retain the services of slave wet nurses to care for their children. If you didn’t have a lactating slave of your own (perhaps one you raped to bring in her milk), you could always rent a neighbor’s. Now we can take that a step further, renting the womb itself. Plenty of women are happy to rent that space for a fair price. Win win. Isn’t renting it out nine months at a time morally superior to renting it out by the hour? I know you’re simply offering the Catholic view, not your own, and I’ve talked to very few Catholics who understand the church’s position better than you do. |
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Easy Way Out I did poll a bunch of women on circumcision vs. uncut, and circumcision won big time. Even among German women, where their partners typically aren’t cropped. It is funny how European men tend to be dead set against this trivial operation, and even Americans have been turning against it, calling it genital mutilation. LOL. So all I can say is get your boys clipped as babies, and their girlfriends will thank you kindly for it decades later. Not that I really care—don’t do it because I don’t need the extra competition. In case there is ever a lineup, the way there is for the ladies in the brothel—again as the older boys explain. I’ve never been in one. Even though there were several in my town. |
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Shiva 20:36 That means accepting that the situations some people find themselves in might preclude some options; therefore we should try to allow them as much control within their own circumstances as possible. This undergirds my own position on a wide range of subjects, including the abortion debate. It springs from Genesis chapter 1, where humans are created 'in the image of God', which is then explained as 'being in control'; but that control is described in chapter 2 as 'to tend and keep'. It is to control as God controls; to be creative and bring all things to their fulfilment. That includes each other, in so far as this pigsty of a world permits. |
