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Comment by GuiA | Hacker News Reader

> These are by far the most important technologies of our time. The consequences of them being set back even a little is utterly enormous, and we should be very concerned about this.

That's just like, your opinion man.

If genetic engineering and life extension become common place, especially if controlled by private companies which naturally seek profit above all else, who will benefit from them most? (hint: probably not people living on welfare)

These issues are fundamentally political, and there is no reason that they should be above any form of discourse or criticism.

If someone's feelings are hurt because there is a backlash against their technoscientism, that's on no one else but them.

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>If genetic engineering and life extension become common place, especially if controlled by private companies which naturally seek profit above all else, who will benefit from them most? (hint: probably not people living on welfare)

Why not? People on welfare have access to better healthcare than the richest person on Earth did 50 years ago. They have access to pocket computers and communication systems far more powerful than the military could have afforded 50 years ago.

But this is beside the point. These ideas can and should be debated. Literally ostracizing people and thinking they are evil for having different opinions on them, is absurd.

>People on welfare have access to better healthcare than the richest person on Earth did 50 years ago. They have access to pocket computers and communication systems far more powerful than the military could have afforded 50 years ago.

Which doesn't really matter unless you have a time machine that can send them back 50 years. At least, none of the poor people I've known (including myself) have ever said "I can't afford to give my children better opportunities, let alone leave them something in my will, but hey! at least they'll have nifty pocket computers!"

It does matter as they live a healthier, happier and more productive life. I think the point is that people are better off now than 50 years earlier.

So in 50 years what used to only be available to billionaires will be over the counter.

Sorry, I just don't see the world in terms of "anything that makes one person better off, necessarily makes someone worse off." That kind of world view is toxic to progress. It completely flies in the face of everything we've achieved in the last 2 centuries.

> These ideas can and should be debated. Literally ostracizing people and thinking they are evil for having different opinions on them, is absurd.

Agreed. But wait, is anyone actually getting ostracized now for having different opinions? Has Sam Altman been refused service somewhere, or denied employment, or suffered any consequence for holding the opinions he does, besides maybe being called a dick on Twitter?

Because this all seems to me like rich people getting their panties in a bunch because they don’t like being called dicks on Twitter.

People in this very thread are saying anyone who works on such technologies are inherently unethical people. Do you not see how this kind of labelling is dangerous and distructive to debate?

It’s called “freedom of speech” my dude, and it’s actually essential to debate, even (particularly!) if you don’t agree with it.

> That's just like, your opinion man.

No. Given the technologies we're talking about, what the parent wrote in those two quoted sentences is literally as close to stating an obvious fact as possible when discussing future technology.

> These issues are fundamentally political, and there is no reason that they should be above any form of discourse or criticism.

Discourse and criticism? Fine. But first, understanding. And some basic math.

The way I see most of those objections look, some people would literally prefer everyone to keep dying over the possibility that they won't be the first to receive a life extension serum. It's one of the most selfish beliefs I've ever encountered.

It's not necessarily selfish. One argument I've heard against life extension is that if it is only - or even deferentially - available to the upper stratum, the power of compound interest will allow them to accumulate and hold even greater proportions of social and economic resources (esp. zero-sum resources like status and power). Others caution that social structures will become more resistant to change if those with the most social capital are also the longest-lived. Most people really do care about status relative to their contemporaries-not just absolute status - and how it affects their agency. And then there are environmentalists who have ecological worries, and others with different specific but impersonal concerns.

Death is a great redistributor for all forms of capital - social, economic, and organic.

I can think of counter-arguments to these points, but they do not necessarily stem from selfishness,merely different preferences.

Yeah, you summed up perfectly one of the main counter arguments.

If the richer you are, the healthier and smarter you can make your babies, and the healthier and the smarter your babies, the more access to jobs/education/etc they get, it’s not much comfort that poor people will be somewhat better off than they were 50 years prior as the inequality gaps keep getting wider and wider.

70 years later, our society is still very much suffering the consequences of things like real estate redlining, which heavily discriminated against black people in the US. Thinking that things like targeted gene therapy and radical life extension couldn’t be harmful in the same way is either pure ignorance or delusion.

> Given the technologies we're talking about, what the parent wrote in those two quoted sentences is literally as close to stating an obvious fact as possible when discussing future technology.

Yeah uh, it’s statements like these that make people so angry at Silicon Valley nerds who think they’ve got it all figured it out and that anyone who disagrees with them are beneath them.

These things aren’t facts, they’re statements that are very much up for debate and discussion. If you can’t even see that, maybe try signing up for an intro course to philosophy at your local community college or something.

(Oh and a little tip for you: angrily repeating that something is an obvious truth over and over doesn’t make it so, surprisingly enough)

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