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Comment by asdkhadsj | Hacker News Reader

> Trying to make better babies through breeding / genetics feeds right into the white supremacy narrative however. It is a really slippery slope, one I'd rather we not try again.

So.. we'll make them non-white, and sidestep that issue? I mostly kid. Yet, it's a shame that even a fairly tame discussion about selecting sperm based on DNA has to be dragged through the mud with racism and godwin-eugenics.

At some point humanity needs to stop being so anti-racist-racist. I'm not saying I don't understand where you come from, I just long for the day when we can discuss DNA selection without someone bringing up skin color.

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It's not just skin color, though. It's height. It's face structure. It's the fact that some Sneeches have stars while others are without thars. It's a natural diversity of _everything_. Yes some aspects of that diversity are devastating congenital issues, but IMO we're not ready — socially or technically — for such power to be safely applied through gene editing.

This so much is literally my point ^

I'd be curious what your thoughts are on my reply to that point: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20812273

I agree that we're in over our heads; but your comment makes it sound like I should be concerned with accidentally wiping out square jaw or blond hair people for moral reasons. I am not.

In the same way that I don't care about skin color; I also don't care about features continuing to exist and be diverse.

As mentioned, I recognize that we're in over our heads technically. I respect that if we were to "wipe something out" it very likely could end up a huge negative to humanity, due to unknown genes and etc.

However the discussion largely took a moral twist when racism/etc got brought up, and frankly I just don't care. I'm not one for history; so the moral implication of not having a physical-feature-group of humanity around, be it freckles, blue eyes, brown hair, light skinned, tall people or whatever, is entirely lost on me.

Humanity from my perspective seems far worse off having cared so much about our differences that I see little reason to be morally concerned about their absence. I imagine we would be better off for it, since we clearly fail with diversity now, it's not buying us any favors.

Likewise, with or without diversity, we will still certainly find reasons to hate each other. The conversation will just change. We're good at hate.

> I'm not one for history; so the moral implication of not having a physical-feature-group of humanity around, be it freckles, blue eyes, brown hair, light skinned, tall people or whatever, is entirely lost on me.

It might be worth reconsidering that viewpoint. As you say, we're good at hate. We've been good at it, too.

We've seen that something as simple as preferring male children to female children has dramatic societal consequences. It might be reasonable to decide you want to bias your child against being left-handed — lefties do have higher rates of accidents due to using right-handed tools after all. What might the societal shifts be as a result? Might we effectively loose some diversity of _thought_ and progress in our society at large? How might remaining lefties be perceived?

The bigger question I think is would it increase hate? This is not something easily measured, imo.

But if we're that worried about even something as minor as lefties, should we not release products either? How are people on phones all the time perceived? If I release a tanning product, should I be concerned about how tanning users are perceived? If I engineer kids with longer hair, am I concerned how they are perceived?

I think we run the risk of anything being hate-able, and thus nothing matters in that regard. Or at least, roughly speaking. Any big change has potentially huge and unknown societal consequences. I mean hell, people were freaking out about a McDonalds McNugget sauce a year ago over a TV Show. I'm not sure the worst of humanity is what we need to nix life saving medical procedures over.

Given the current situation (here in the US at least) where white supremacy is very much on the rise, I feel it is very important to politely discuss, so we don't repeat the past.

Just because I'm a privileged cis white male doesn't mean I think it is easy for everyone else.

It would be interesting to start a eugenics-esque program, but focus on DNA superiority combined within equal races mixed in. Ie, fully embrace "melting pot".

It's of course a silly dream to promote all skin colors equally. While I'd like it, it would immediately cause problems with the people who prioritize skin color over all else.

It's such a tiring state of the world.

> but focus on DNA superiority combined within equal races mixed in

“Superiority” is always subjective; the fact that the phenotype you are maximizing doesn't happen to be the same ideal sought by white supremacists doesn't really make a difference to the ethics of such a eugenics program (the steps you are taking to advance it might be a legitimate differentiator, but the purpose would not.)

Is superiority subjective? We have hundreds of fatal flaws in our genetics. Would someone defend that those are superior? I'm not talking about subjective traits like hair. I'm talking about scientific markers of health, disease, retardation, death.

Not advancing this technology because of how it could be used seems awkward, like not making medicine because it could save bad people. Cutting our nose off to spite our face.

> Is superiority subjective?

Pretty much by definition.

> We have hundreds of fatal flaws in our genetics.

Pretty much by definition, we (living humans) have no necessarily-fatal flaws in our genetics. We may have some that are fatal when they combine in certain ways or in certain circumstances, but the fatal effects in those conditions aren't the only effects they have.

I'm a bit lost. I get that genetics are not typically isolated to "just one bad thing", but I feel like you're dodging the point.

To say that say a trait we only know to be a significant marker to mental retardation isn't inferior, due to moral reasons seems in bad faith.

I am very accepting that technically (as I mentioned in other posts) we are in over our heads, and are likely to make mistakes. Frankly, these are games we don't have the understanding to be playing. However that is not what we're discussing here.

What we're discussing is whether or not we can morally proceed with any type of engineering. As if doing so would without fail become "lets make black people more dumb, because we don't like them" or w/e. This seems poorly thought out to me.

If I view engineering as yet another medical tool, then lets look at the existing medical tools. Could I not make pills that selectively hurt specific groups more than others? Yes. So while the stakes are likely higher with genetic engineering, I'm arguing that I don't think we should, or even can, be making scientific medical decisions based on wishy washy what-ifs and moral gut feelings of right and wrong.

Lets focus on saving lives.

> To say that say a trait we only know to be a significant marker to mental retardation isn't inferior, due to moral reasons seems in bad faith

(1) traits aren't markers: mental retardation is a trait, some Gene may be a marker.

(2) I'm not saying that anything “isn’t inferior, due to moral reasons”. On the other hand, I'm saying that any designation of “inferiority” is (not restricted to genes, but ever, anywhere) a subjective value judgement. And that because of the complexities at play in genetics, people will quite vehemently disagree on judgements about which genes are inferior and should be eradicated, both because they will disagree about which traits should be eradicated and because very often the relationship between traits and genes is complex.

> What we're discussing is whether or not we can morally proceed with any type of engineering.

Sure, that's part of the discussion, and I'm saying, on that question, if it is morally permissible and Nazi eugenics is not, it because you are making tools available that people can choose to use the same way they choose partners potentially for genetic reasons, not imposing their use top-down on society and culling “undesirables.” And not because “the traits we've decided to eliminate are really bad, and those we've decided to promote are really good, unlike the Nazis who made dubious decisions as to the targeting of their eugenics program.”

> As if doing so would without fail become "lets make black people more dumb, because we don't like them"

Are you guaranteeing that all the resulting technology will be freely available to all? Because even if we except that the techniques themselves will be “good” in individual application, that's literally exactly what they should be expected to become except not for the “because we don't like them” reason, but instead for the “because their poor” reason.

> (1) traits aren't markers: mental retardation is a trait, some Gene may be a marker.

Ah, I should be clear I was trying to use vague terms. Any overlap with real terms is coincidence, and not intended. Just for clarification :)

> I'm not saying that anything “isn’t inferior, due to moral reasons”. On the other hand, I'm saying that any designation of “inferiority” is (not restricted to genes, but ever, anywhere) a subjective value judgement. And that because of the complexities at play in genetics, people will quite vehemently disagree on judgements about which genes are inferior and should be eradicated, both because they will disagree about which traits should be eradicated and because very often the relationship between traits and genes is complex.

I agree. Yet, isn't that the case with all medicine? Hell, much of the deaf community wants to stay deaf - should we stop working on hearing impairment to placate one group that likes a thing? This seems like backwards development to me.

> not imposing their use top-down on society and culling “undesirables.”

Oh, I'm not sure where I gave the impression that I wanted to cull society. Nothing I said was intended to be forced. Well, beyond the obvious forcing in that the baby has no say in the matter lol.

I wouldn't advocate for culling in the same way I'm not advocating we forcibly implant deaf people with hearing implants. In my view, that's not a reasonable discussion. You can argue against it if you like, but I'm not the counterpart for that argument haha :)

> Are you guaranteeing that all the resulting technology will be freely available to all?

Nope, definitely not. In the same way medicine is hugely corrupt and not available to all, currently. However just because there are society based problems in distribution of advancement is not an argument to avoid advancement, imo.

If so, we should throw modern medical science out the window. Millions, hell billions of people are unable to get even "old" treatment, let alone modern or bleeding edge treatment. I don't believe that invalidates the usefulness of said advancements, though. It's just a different problem entirely.

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