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Comment by shadowgovt | Hacker News Reader

drusepth's relatives don't own drusepth's DNA. This would be similar to arguing that if I had an identical twin, I need my twin's consent to donate a photo of myself to a facial recognition library.

But more generally, the arguments being raised here regarding risk of abuse of the data are predicated on tyrannical or illegal activities occurring. Instead of denying ourselves the benefits of cures derived from data such as this, why can we not build a society where the data is not abused?

Human pro-social activity is a very powerful thing. If there are risks in unifying data, we should work to build a society that stewards those risks responsibly, we shouldn't try to cut ourselves off and hope the life of a data hermit serves us better.

I mean, what other technologies should we deny ourselves? A tyrant can use tanks and troop transports to wage war on their citizens. Should we tear up the roads lest they be abused by tyranny?

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> drusepth's relatives don't own drusepth's DNA.

This doesn't preclude drusepth from using their property in an assholish way.

>This would be similar to arguing that if I had an identical twin, I need my twin's consent to donate a photo of myself to a facial recognition library.

No, it'd just mean that you're an asshole if you do.

>But more generally, the arguments being raised here regarding risk of abuse of the data are predicated on tyrannical or illegal activities occurring. Instead of denying ourselves the benefits of cures derived from data such as this, why can we not build a society where the data is not abused?

Time scale. Societies come and go. To the extent that we don't have tyrannical ones they're not exactly long lived. Once you've given the data and power to the non-tyrannical government, you're screwed if tyranny ever swings around again. That's a huge gamble to make off of nothing given the history of all world governments. Seems far more likely they'll all be tyrannical again at some point than never again ever.

>I mean, what other technologies should we deny ourselves?

All of them. Technology is a perversion of our innate condition. A result of mate signalling gone off the rails.

>A tyrant can use tanks and troop transports to wage war on their citizens. Should we tear up the roads lest they be abused by tyranny?

Of course!

We will, of course, skip the irony that you can only share those thoughts with us via a technology that a tyrant could abuse.

This is actually an interesting debate and suggests that individual consent isn't the ideal mechanism for DNA sharing vs (say) government regulation.

I agree, but it's hard to establish good regulation in a space where society hasn't yet come to some consensus on the underlying philosophy that would guide such regulation, is the problem.

>I mean, what other technologies should we deny ourselves? A tyrant can use tanks and troop transports to wage war on their citizens. Should we tear up the roads lest they be abused by tyranny?

As you have been overly fond of using tu quoque as a rhetorical device throughout this thread ─ in your earlier response, you trivialised the exercise of willingly handing-over the most precious of all and the pinnacle of personal data, whilst paying for the privilege, and compared it to just another transaction on Amazon: what about the fact, that almost all tyrants are enabled and empowered by somebody (usually the govt.); it would be conducive to conclude based upon your fervour, that you are equally complicit in creating yet another tyrannical corporation, which shares your disdain for privacy?

Your conclusion begs the question that the corporation in question is tyrannical or disdains privacy. Apart from that, I'll absolutely own that I want to see them succeed; I believe in the likelihood that big-data analysis is a valuable tool in conquering the diseases that have been resistant to past methods of devising cures. I volunteered my DNA for this purpose (and none of the DNA that 23andme holds wasn't volunteered for this purpose).

>Your conclusion begs the question that the corporation in question is tyrannical or disdains privacy

If you seek an answer to that question, you don't have to venture very far from Google, who birthed this creation.

I don't seek an answer, because I believe the question is answered that 23andme is not tyrannical and doesn't disdain privacy. Neither does Google, for that matter, and I think many people agree with such an assessment (Gmail has nearly half a billion active users).

"Begs the question" means your argument presupposed the truth of this part of the statement instead of supporting it.

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