Hacker News Reader

Comment by screye | Hacker News Reader

The answer is obvious isn't it.

If gene editing can make a human smarter & better looking, then you're dooming your own children to a lifetime of inferiority if you have them naturally. Unlike tech or drug enhanced people, there is no way to detect a genetically enhanced person. So they'd be in your midst, better than you in every way, while you'd be stuck with the realization that there is nothing you can do in this life to change your inferiority to these neo-humans.

    "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable" - 1962, John F. Kennedy

Pandora's box is already unlocked, we just won't let anyone open it. At the same time, technology is inevitable, and it's probably better to set up legal pathways to access this technology than let the grey market go wild.

View on HN

It's ironic how much optimism is inherent in these projections of doom. Given our limited knowledge of human biology, way before "gene editing can make a human smarter & better looking", we're likely to see unintended mutations, suffering and extensive litigation/regulation. Tech innovations often have messy beginnings, but this one in particular will be particularly messy (or just plain gruesome).

Yeah, I'm amazed that so many commenters on HN think that the technology, or even our understanding of things like "smarter & better looking" is anywhere near this level of sophistication.

The sentence that really stood out to me was: > In the years since He’s revelations, researchers have uncovered further concerns about the use of CRISPR–Cas9 in embryos, including that it can shuffle large segments of chromosomes.

There are a number of horrible genetic diseases, including Huntington's Disease, that do not present until later in life; for Huntington's Disease it typically presents when someone is in their 30s or 40s. We don't know what shuffling chromosomes might do. There's a very real possibility that if there was widespread adoption of CRISPR to make children smarter and more beautiful, it would could with the side effect of condemning their bodies and/or minds to fall apart in their teens, 20s, or 30s.

Animal models won't tell us this. We'll only learn the true consequences over time. This is one of those situations where "move fast and break things" is just wrong.

Selective memory loss.

The dawn of infinite power was heralded in with the annihilation of 2 cities in Japan, and the death of many innocents exposed to open radiation in the development process. The industrial revolution began with pollution that worsened the lifespan on the 'winners' for decades before we figured out how to make these spaces safer. Modern medicine started off with bloodletting & modern psychiatry started off with lobotomies.

The first few generations that adopt a revolutionary technology see their lives get worse before they get better.

Problem is, AI, Medicine & Automation are all likely to produce revolutions that are bigger and faster spreading than anything we've seen before. I do not wish to be a 'growing child' in an era of increasing adoption of this tech. Growing up with just the internet was confusing enough as is.

More than all of these, the scariest is a technology that I've started hearing whispers of. We might 'solve aging' in this century. I hope I get to die before the advent of perpetual life seems to be on the horizon.

Why is it important to you to die before we solve aging instead of after?

I take what you're saying to mean that you don't think we should cure aging?

Do you believe that we should cure cancer?

Do you believe that we should not have cured smallpox?

Why or why not?

Playing devils advocate here; wouldn’t that be a prime example of evolutionary displacement of an inferior species with one that has a higher fitness? Those modified, superior humans would mate, obviously, and spread their gene pool faster than non-modified humans, thus replacing them. Isn’t that a good thing, overall?

How many people do you know truly willing to endure a lifetime of inferiority and subordination for "the greater good"? Get real.

But that’s exactly the life you and me already live, and have come to terms with (I hope?). We’re never going to be rich and famous. So nobody had a choice to begin with.

That's not quite true. We are only rendered inferior by capital, or by athletic ability, a skill, a talent. I was responding to the prospect of something all encompassing which to me is what man-made genetic superiority suggests.

Isn’t that a bit naive? Unless you’re born rich, you’re chances of obtaining wealth are extremely slim.

I get where you’re coming from, but whether the barrier is 20 meters or infinitely high doesn’t matter in practice, because I can’t jump neither…

You already live in that world.

Not by choice

Traits are advantageous until they are not. Consider the shift of the US economy from blue collar work toward knowledge work over the last 100 years. Those types of work favor different traits and types of people.

I don’t think that would stop people from foolishly altering their germ line to chase trends. But the reduction of entropy / diversity in the gene pool caused by that would represent an existential threat to humanity.

My guess is that the germ lines of people who tried to outsmart evolution would get weeded out pretty fast.

Everyone says germline editing would reduce diversity in the gene pool, and I can see validity to that argument. But, could it not do the opposite when people start altering their children to align with their own values? I could see the loss of some universally "bad" genes, but a lot of the judgement on this sort of things gonna come down to who does the gene editing and how they exactly implement it. When multiple groups start doing this in practice, I could see it fracturing the species more than homogenizing it. Especially when combined with something like iterated embryonic stem cell selection when you can jump several generations at a time. That would result in multiple post-human species derived from baseline humanity with their own specializations, talents, etc. Which would be more diverse.

Ehhh… all you have to do is take a look at instagram or TikTok to yourself convince yourself otherwise. Humans are pack / herd animals and we tend enjoy the safety of crowds.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com