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Comment by shiven | Hacker News Reader

Good for you. Me, on the other hand, would like to see my genome multiply and spread on this planet.

Yeah, but you are so special, so unique: humanity desperately needs your genome. :P

In my opinion, the only opinion that matters to my life, yes, I’m that unique and the world needs my genome. :P

So what is your goal? Your genes are in already loads of people. No matter how many kids you have your specific combination of them will be diluted out of existence in a few generations.

This is very hard to quantify and I certainly have no data to support this, but; I suppose, in this era of civilization, your actions in life, your influence on society and culture, and memes you propagate, rather than genes, will have a much greater influence.

"As for me, I'd rather spread memes than genes anyways"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tIwYNioDL8

Your sarcasm is noted, but YES, the world does need high-IQ, high-conscientiousness people breeding far more than it needs low-IQ, low-conscientiousness people breeding.

Both of those traits are highly heritable, and both of those traits are going to be necessary to get this species off this rock rather than degenerating into watching reruns of "Ow, My Balls!" while energy supplies dwindle and climate change finishes us off.

There is this movie about that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygdTuFjZnDc

Apparently modesty isn't that heritable. If you think the world's problems are going to be solved by your one wunderkind, rather than investing time and money in the already considerable number of intelligent people on the planet who are lacking opportunity, then clearly your genes aren't all that valuable.

We have enough people and our gene pool isn't diverse enough to make any one person invaluable to the future of the planet.

Yeah, well, that’s like, your opinion man.

Good thing you don’t get to control who’s genes propagate and who’s don’t. All you can do is prevent your genes from being inherited. And, that is your sole prerogative. Just as spreading my genes, is mine.

How does this ideological drive improve your welfare or happiness?

Not an ideological drive, i.e. not driven primarily by ideology. Driven more by a primitive will for my physicality to survive beyond my physical lifetime.

So mostly an attempt to address the fear of death?

Not fear. Just the certainity of death.

How does persistence of DNA address death?

DNA = A blueprint for something that makes me unique, and the only known way to travel through time, into the future — in the most sentient form I know of — as a ”not me, but still me” human.

There is nothing sentient about DNA.

Is that ideological or biological?

Unless you think concepts like "genome" and "propagation" are somehow encoded in our DNA, it's ideological.

There are clear biological drives to sex and caring for young, but I don't see evidence for a direct biological drive for being fruitful and multiplying.

I suspect, like many human things, it's an underlying biological drive interpreted by our lawyer-as-narrator, the consciousness. I'm thinking of the "elephant and the rider" metaphor -- the elephant has drives for sex and care of young, the rider on the top rationalizes it.

The elephant turns left and goes into a river. After they're headed for the river, the rider thinks, "I'm hot, I should go to the river."

Sex and caring for young directly results in "being fruitful and multiplying".

But no inbuilt explicit desire for it.

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