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Comment by moron4hire | Hacker News Reader

People participate in extreme sports, risking life and limb, all the time. Unlike being the N-thousandth person to summit Everest, this guy at least has a chance—however small it may be—at improving the human condition.

It's not your place to tell people what to do with their own bodies.

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"It's not your place to tell people what to do with their own bodies."

Come on, that's ridiculous.

E.g., if a loved one is abusing alcohol, it is definitely your place to intervene.

In that situation it is your place to intervene because the person has his or her willpower and logical mind hijacked by alcoholism. We are creatures of logic but also of passion. Sometime our body will do things that our mind don't want them to. In those situation, help is required. The person can't defend itself so it's your place to help them.

> [...] the person has his or her willpower and logical mind hijacked by alcoholism

I think it is very well possible to have your logical mind hijacked by a possible cure for a disease.

Isn't it implied, "mentally competent people"?

Sure but people still have bodily autonomy. Nobody has the right over anyone's body. You can tell them the risks, you can try to convince them to get rehab, but they ultimately have the right to do what they want with their body. Whether or not you disagree with someone's right is irrelevant, it's still one of their inalienable human rights.

It's really not that simple and you're confusing things. Sure, we have the right not to be molested or have treatment forced on us, but that's completely different from the idea of having the right to self-harm. There is a common fallacy, that we have a moral right to do whatever we wish with out bodies. We don't. This has nothing to do with anybody else having a right over anyone else or the law (we must distinguish between MORAL rights and legal rights, or I could just as easily say that legislation could change the right you believe you have). Even if you were the only person left on the planet, you would not have the moral right to self-harm. Why? Because we do not have the right to moral evil and self-harm is a moral evil.

Moreover, unless those engaged in genetic experimentation sterilize themselves, it also poses risks to population genetics.

I'm not actually confusing anything, and I don't see where your definition of "Moral evil" is coming from.I don't see why the right to self-harm is immoral. Tattoos and piercings are self-mutilation. I agree on the risk of population genetics and think that sterilization should be required before even attempting such a procedure, but that's because you're risking the well being of others, not self.

That would almost sound altruistic of him. But then again, why does he feel the need to advertise it? Is he getting paid to advertise it so others, who understand the risks even less than he does, accept to become guinea pigs for this experiment?

There's a difference between doing the research yourself and deciding to put your own body at risk "for the greater good" or even "for fun", and doing it because you saw a cool ad/PR story about it. It's why tobacco advertising was banned, too. You don't want the mobs to suddenly "want their genes enhanced, too!"

> That would almost sound altruistic of him. But then again, why does he feel the need to advertise it?

The two are not mutually exclusive. Why do any non-profits and open source projects advertise? Advertising is a fundamental component of all projects. Any perception otherwise is just the ol' bucket-of-crabs.

Right, but the BBC wouldn't dare run an article about squirrel suits without talking about how dangerous they actually are. In this case they should have done the same thing. I'm all for people experimenting on their own bodies, but when we talk about what they're doing we better portray the magnitude of the risks they're dealing with.

If they choose to publish their activities and offer an explanation, of course they’re inviting comment.

There is comment and then there is literal ad hominem. "This guy is incredibly stupid." Lots of people do lots of things that—on the outside—look stupid. Hell, I would wager the odds of having a lasting impact in the world by choosing to join a startup are lower than this.

ad hominem is "He's stupid, therefore he's wrong about some claim."

"He did a stupid thing, therefore he's stupid" is not ad hominem. Inflammatory, subject to a huge debate about definitions, perhaps even wrong? Sure. But if you expand it out reasonably (a sample intervening premise: "People who do stupid things are stupid."), the logic is valid, in the technical sense. To attack the conclusion requires attacking something else about the premises, the most obvious fruitful avenue being the definition of "stupid" in question.

(Although, spoiler, that pretty much ends in "I have my definition and you have yours, and by mine, yes, he's stupid, but by yours, no, he's not.", and as long as we don't mistake the map for the territory and argue as if the definition of "stupid" that is used by someone has any power over the real world, is a perfectly acceptable result.)

(Incidentally, I consider my sample intervening premise up there as stronger than I personally would use the word stupid. I like to think of myself as generally not stupid, but I've done stupid things. Still, with that premise, the argument is logically valid.)

Saying — based on evidence — that somebody is stupid isn’t an ad hominem. At worst it’s shorthand for “his actions are stupid”.

Which, given the evidence, they unarguably are: Virtually every expert in the field, as well as other biohackers, think that what he’s doing is a bad idea, and based on dangerous superficial knowledge. The comparison to Barry Marshall (the stomach ulcher guy) is particularly unhelpful since Marshall was an expert in the field, and acting on a solid theory and with a contingency plan. But even his actions are still rightly called reckless.

All that said, I’m still impressed with Roberts’ self-experiment, and curious about the results of the long-term follow-up. But it is stupid.

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