The hysteria over genetic engineering will last just as long as it takes for the first few successful attempts to show their benefits, and then everyone will promptly forget it was ever an issue at all.
I think we’ve already fell into this type of scenario and I think this is partially why some are so against it. They’re looking at this as an luxury to families but if done right, gene engineering could and should be used solely to protect against inheritable and community spread diseases. This type of engineering can be a massive breakthrough for developing countries and similar areas.
But looking at this from a realistic standpoint: genetic engineering will be a taboo extreme that only a few will ever be successful with—until it is internationally recognized as beneficial and properly regulated.
Inequality is rising, not falling.
For example, any person at all today can easily get their hands on weapon that would win them any fight with a caveman wielding a bone, sure. But today, there's tanks and satellites and whatnot -- the most powerless became WAY more powerless in contras to the most powerful. You don't compare the poor of today with the rich of yesterday, you compare the them with the rich of today. And you compare the poor of tomorrow with the rich of tomorrow.
> Rifles, muskets, long-bows and hand-grenades are inherently democratic weapons. A complex weapon makes the strong stronger, while a simple weapon - so long as there is no answer to it - gives claws to the weak.
-- George Orwell
Already it's pretty normal for rich people to consider themselves above socializing with poor people. Adding editing of genes on top of that might not just turn that wide gap into a fortified moat, complete with property rights and patents and enforcement of said patents (imagine getting a mutation by chance that you have no license for), it might also mess up the incentives for medical research even more.
Why find a cure for a disease that anyone can get, that is another "equalizer", when you can immunize yourself and your offspring to it? You may say all such things will always be made available to everybody, but how would you know now? What of the current behaviour of the powerful gives you reason to consider that likely? When it comes to biodiversity and the possibility of extinction, not many HN comments mention the people with the biggest footprints, but a lot mention "overpopulation". So how would that mesh with making the unwashed masses more resilient and healthy? Wouldn't it make more sense to go the opposite way? You see, "perhaps" isn't good enough with something like this. At these speeds, "eventually" steering means crashing into a wall.
Are they equalisers though? And what makes you think gene editing won't be available to everyone? It seems like the sort of thing with an exponential cost curve. It will very rapidly become cheap and accessible to all.
In fact, i'd argue it's likely to be more equalizing than inequalizing.
The rich and already disproportionately powerful will get it and use it first (creating barriers to upward mobility and exacerbating class power divides), then will have every incentive (and even more disproportionate power than previously) to create barriers to access.
Similar to the reason that, 70+ years later, there are only a handful of nuclear weapons states.
Given how so many parents are desperate about their kids to succeed in the super-competitive world, this is bound to become a trend - especially in middle class population who have money for the procedure but aren't rich. In China, Japan, there is cutthroat fight for getting in best schools, be the most attractive etc. These parents are also very easy to be mislead with incorrect/incomplete information.
EDIT: What hysteria were you talking about?
I think the burden of proof is on the person asserting that to say why it is so. We alter ourselves in lots of ways, why is this different?
> EDIT: What hysteria were you talking about?
All the scientists condemning this as terrible, and articles written about the dystopian future it portends.
This is a fair question. And I've had philosophical problems taking psychiatric drugs, for that matter. (I think it's resolved to some extent by considering that lots of substances we ingest all the time are psychoactive. So it's part of the normal human experience.)
I would say this - Whatever modification you make, you have to come up with a line, a standard, for which you argue "this is still a human." I draw that line at deliberate engineering of genetics. What is yours? Are there some genes that still shouldn't be edited? Maybe you could draw some line there?
OR, if you think that's a silly question and don't care about what is or isn't a human, let's revisit the equally silly assumption that we should care about propagating the human race. I personally feel like if you take such a nihilistic approach to the definition of human, you may as well go all the way and adopt an anti-natalist position. It's just not clear any more what game we're playing.
> All the scientists condemning this as terrible, and articles written about the dystopian future it portends.
Interesting, I'd expect scientists to be on the pro-side of this. I don't know have a strong opinion on the consequential outcomes.
(Made some edits above)
I also don't see how this relates to the instinct to procreate. We don't procreate because we think its the "human" thing to do, we do it because we're human and we have an instinct to procreate. If procreation conflicted with some other drive or interest of ours, we might decide to forgo it (and many do). But this doesn't seem out of bounds of what is typically human either.