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Comment by fallingknife | Hacker News Reader

I guess I never thought it was much more than a good movie. I mean what is the message supposed to be? For one thing the main character has a heart condition and absolutely should be weeded out of the space mission he is trying to get on. As a larger point about a dystopian future with discrimination based on genetic characteristics I don't think it works either. We discriminate like that based on genetics now. It's just that it comes from random chance at birth rather than human modification, but really what's the difference?

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IMO the message is that you can change your destiny with grit and effort, no matter what any authority (even science) says, and trying that is worth it, even if you fail.

I think it is a movie about life and how ruthless it is.

Exactly! We are all already the beneficiaries and casualties of the unearned rewards and punishments due to the randomized genetic combination we received at conception. Kathryn Paige Harden brilliantly explains this ethical challenge in her book, “The Genetic Lottery: Why DNA Matters for Social Equality”, https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691190808/th...

> In recent years, scientists like Kathryn Paige Harden have shown that DNA makes us different, in our personalities and in our health—and in ways that matter for educational and economic success in our current society.

> In The Genetic Lottery, Harden introduces readers to the latest genetic science, dismantling dangerous ideas about racial superiority and challenging us to grapple with what equality really means in a world where people are born different. Weaving together personal stories with scientific evidence, Harden shows why our refusal to recognize the power of DNA perpetuates the myth of meritocracy, and argues that we must acknowledge the role of genetic luck if we are ever to create a fair society.

As a professor of clinical psychology, Harden is well situated to introduce us laypersons to the overwhelming strong evidence that genes matter. Notably, even biological siblings only share 50% of their genes with each other. Therefore the randomization in genetic combination alone can create differences in innate strengths and weaknesses among children with the same parents. A lottery is the appropriate metaphor for the lack of control any of us have in the genes we’re bestowed at conception.

Genetic engineering may offer an equalizer, but that presents its own ethical challenges. Harden instead argues that we should design a sufficiently robust welfare state to counteract these natural inequities. She presents a Rawlian framework (ie, veil of ignorance) to argue for why we should not accept genetic privileges and disadvantages anymore than we’d accept other injustices.

>Harden shows why our refusal to recognize the power of DNA perpetuates the myth of meritocracy [...]

There's an on-going philosophical discussion about meritocracy. The debate on i2c[^2] is fascinating. I've read both books, but I was leaning towards Sandel from the get-go anyway.

However reading about this topic on the DNA /generic side is equally interesting. Thanks for the link to the book :-)

[^2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOpdahGGoxE

> I mean what is the message supposed to be? For one thing the main character has a heart condition and absolutely should be weeded out of the space mission he is trying to get on.

Why? Their discriminatory predictions were incorrect. Space travel is clearly quite routine in this future, so to put it in today's terms, would you forbid people with heart conditions from driving cars or trucks?

>Their discriminatory predictions were incorrect

we don't know that because the movie stops before we can figure that out. I went to school with a guy who had a medical condition that put him at risk of passing out, albeit rarely. but he could legally drive. Ended up having an episode and veering into the oncoming traffic and his 19 year old girlfriend ended up dead.

There's a potential less romantic ending to the movie where Vincent strokes out on the rocket and gets someone killed. The allegedly positive message of the film is that someone's self image is more important than even justified standards that exist to protect other people. Mind you in the film he even fakes his heart rate during a test and collapses afterwards, suggesting this is not some abstract form of discrimination.

> we don't know that because the movie stops before we can figure that out

We do know they were incorrect, because he was already considerably older than his predicted age of death. We also know they were incorrect because he outperformed people who were his "intellectual superiors".

> There's a potential less romantic ending to the movie where Vincent strokes out on the rocket and gets someone killed.

And that can also happen to the genetically enhanced. The whole point of the movie is that statistics are not certainties.

> The allegedly positive message of the film is that someone's self image is more important than even justified standards that exist to protect other people.

No, the positive message of the film is that genetic statistics cannot capture the full potential of a human being, and that the standards that were in place were in no way "justified".

That's the point of the movie. It's like the current world but amplified.

> We discriminate like that based on genetics now. It's just that it comes from random chance at birth rather than human modification, but really what's the difference?

What are you alluding to here?

We explicitly discriminate by intelligence, which is mostly genetic. How is that different than Gattaca? One must assume that the genetically enhanced in the movie are actually enhanced after all.

And we implicitly discriminate by height, which shows a strong correlation with income. That one doesn't even have utility like discrimination based on intelligence does.

> We explicitly discriminate by intelligence, which is mostly genetic. How is that different than Gattaca?

We discriminate on intelligence when it's important for the job at hand. The bad kind of discrimination is the kind that considers irrelevant factors.

I agree implicit discrimination based on height and attractiveness exists in our culture. This movie is a searing criticism of exactly that kind of discrimination.

We do our college admissions by SAT score. If we did them by genetic test for intelligence (Gattaca style), the classes would be mostly the same minus some dumb rich kids. And since social class and income is heavily determined by where you go to school, it's a similar situation to Gattaca.

In the movie, if the genetic enhancements work, then it's basically meritocracy, and not that different than what we have today. If they don't work, like you seem to imply in your comment, then it's arbitrary discrimination, which isn't a particularly interesting or unique concept for a movie.

> We do our college admissions by SAT score. If we did them by genetic test for intelligence (Gattaca style), the classes would be mostly the same minus some dumb rich kids.

You have literally no way of rigourously making that claim given our incomplete understanding of genetics and intelligence. In any case, it's immaterial to my point as I already acknowledged that our culture discriminates for irrelevant reasons, and this movie is a harsh critique of that practice.

> In the movie, if the genetic enhancements work, then it's basically meritocracy

No, it's the complete opposite. The people who were rewarded didn't actually do anything to earn those rewards, so it's the exact opposite of a meritocracy, it's genetic cronyism, no different than awarding a promotion based on someone's skin colour.

> If they don't work, like you seem to imply in your comment, then it's arbitrary discrimination, which isn't a particularly interesting or unique concept for a movie.

The whole point of the movie is to elevate the notion of meritocracy based on actual achievements, and to criticize discrimination and generalizations based on some nebulous notion of statistical "potential".

I feel like you're actually getting to the deep, important questions explored in the movie, as you try to explain why it's just a good movie :)

I think the big take-away is that it's not a foregone conclussion that they "always work, always better". The question is should we remove the possibility from those without perfect genetic markers because the odds say so, or give them a chance and evaluate in some other way? Or are the markers both less conclusive than believed and/or less causal? We could find lots of trivial markers that have nothing to do with meaningful outcomes; does the world explored in Gattaca take this to the extreme?

In the movie class mobility is impossible. Not improvable, not very difficult, but predetermined at birth.

In reality it can be impossible for some people, but there are many examples of people accomplishing this, some with lots of effort.

I believe the absolute determinism of that society is what makes it a nightmare. Saying that it is the same as reality is, IMO, an exaggeration.

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