Comment by lettergram | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lettergram | Hacker News Reader

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First, congratulations! Having a child is a wonderful experience. Personally, I think it's what makes life worth living.

That said, hate to be a downer, but I do want to point out some stuff:

> And I’ve never understood this

Let's just go through a few fairly obvious scenarios that can come from this:

- Once this is commercialized we no longer need women.

- Genetic diversity, thing of the past.

- DNA sequences are patented and owned by biotech at birth, you'll have to pay your loan back for life.

- Kill switch added to every human, such that if you question your authoritarian masters, they'll kill everyone with the given switch. (i.e. cloned slaves)

- Governments can castrate the entire population and control the future (think this wouldn't happen, see how mandatory abortion laws for the genetically unfit - they have quite a few in Europe, Asia, etc).

- Genocide-made-easy, wipe any population you want out and grow a new one

Let's just consider the more mundane:

- We already have children without parents. Imagine the desire for any kind of foster situation when you can just grow your own.

- Elderly parents looking to raise children (say, as you say, in your 60's) could now do so

- Government raising & caring for children...

I'm sorry, I hear the calls for improvements in this area, but... the down side risks are enormous. I personally, think it's inevitable, but I also assume all technology will be used for maximal good and evil. Unfortunately, this technology seems like it has far more evil potential.

> we no longer need women

Most of humanity is female. Women are the majority. If we’re getting rid of one of the sexes you’d better hope not everyone gets to vote.

Seriously, the idea that women are only useful to society as baby incubators is the most jaw-droppingly sexist thing I’ve seen on this site in years.

> Seriously, the idea that women are only useful to society as baby incubators is the most jaw-droppingly sexist thing I’ve seen on this site in years.

I never said anything close to this.

“Once this is commercialized we no longer need women” is a pretty clear statement that the only reason “we” need women is because we don’t have any other way to incubate babies. It’s what you said, whether or not it’s what you meant.

We no longer "need" men either, we can clone with embryos. We don't "need" either, objectively -- In the sense of reproduction (which is what we were discussing).

Further, it doesn't mean I think we should create an authoritarian dictatorship where dictators control cloned slaves. You know, something I also mentioned.

I'm stating alternatives that can occur and what others will think.

Doesn't matter. Those who already disagree with you will pretend to not understand speaking in generalities because it's convenient for them. Obviously you said what you said in the context of reproduction.

And yet I've witnessed feminists oppose effective male contraception simply because it would empower men and depower women. What do you think their opinions on artificial wombs are going to be?

Wikipedia says 101 males to 100 females.

Interesting, thanks for pointing that out. I didn’t realize the Chinese one-child policy’s effects had pushed things quite that far yet. Data here for the curious:

https://ourworldindata.org/gender-ratio#how-does-the-sex-rat...

https://ourworldindata.org/gender-ratio#how-many-women-are-m...

- Once this is commercialized we no longer need women.

We already "don't need men". Other mammals have been cloned or heterozygously created from bimaternal parents, and only females are required for either of these processes.

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-45801043

Also I imagine you'll still need a womb to grow the embryo? Ovaries are not a womb, so "commercializing" this alone doesn't obviate the need for women.

We're fairly close to an artificial womb

https://www.bbc.com/news/av/health-50056405

https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/03/17/1020969/mouse-em...

And I agree with you we "don't need men"; I'm just pointing out a litany of implications.

The first one is for a better incubator for premature babies. The second is in mice and doesnt sound particularly close, as they still required pregnant mice and the embryos die after a certain point because of lack of placenta. Neither of these seems very close to replacing the need for women, but maybe will be closer after 10 more years?

In 2017 they were growing sheep in one for 4 months

https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15112

I think it’s relatively close, sure maybe 10 years, I’m not sure exactly. My point, was that this technology is going down this path and theoretically, pretty dangerous

Makes great sci-fi, well it could, your pitches are alright but we can already do most of these with good ol' fashion forced conception and if you can't get your followers to screw for the cause then you're probably not much of a threat. Doesn't the doomer sci-fi connect this to VR somehow? Like you don't just want to make babies, you put 'em in a maturation chamber and mature them, rapidly. Better ban VR, there's no legitimate use. I for one welcome our Meta-Clone Overlords.

> Once this is commercialized we no longer need women.

Babies need to develop inside a uterus, and artificial wombs are much harder to make than artificial ovaries.

There's even plenty of reason to doubt the motivations of the very researchers involved here. George Church is known to have had extensive ties and contacts with Jeffrey Epstein. Here is some research at Harvard that Epstein sponsored (along with the Gates Foundation) singing the praises of "eusocial" forms of social organization, where reproductive ability is confined to a tiny subset of the population: "The ties that bind – Harvard Gazette" https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2010/08/the-ties-that...

Do these people really intend for these technologies to benefit the broad mass of people?

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