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A4ET8a8uTh0_v2

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Why stop there? Clearly any kind of medical intervention is against nature’s wisdom.

Do I seem to argue against it? It is intended to ask a simple question:

"At what point does it get silly?"

The answer is obviously "it doesn't". We're in an eternal losing war against entropy but this is a battle we're winning.

Interesting, are you stating there is no scenario under which you would consider those types of body modifications not quite acceptable? I am curious about your individual line. You state there isn't one, but I am relatively certain one exists.

It’s Sorites. I don’t have a line because the cost to identify it is much greater than the cost to move forward. When we cross it or approach a positive feedback loop, we will take a step back and re-evaluate.

> Interesting, are you stating there is no scenario under which you would consider those types of body modifications not quite acceptable?

Yes! If some body modifications make someone more efficient at killing, raping, stealing, committing crimes we should all be against it. If it is just because it annoys some people's sense of nature, no.

Hmm, would you be in favor of gene editing technology if it allowed enhanced intelligence treatments to killers, rapists and thieves?

Once we can control fully developed adult brains, at the level you're suggesting for this thought experiment, that power will force us to reconsider criminality as a mental health issue — even if the personality disorders leading to criminality happen to be harder to fix in adults than boosting of IQ.

But note how I phrased that: Being able to rewrite the DNA of killers etc. to make them smarter, in the absence of influencing developed adult brains, only makes their descendants (in the strictly genetic sense of the word) smarter.

At some point in this century, and probably sooner rather than later, we're going to be able to cost-effectively write arbitrary human-length genomes. Simply printing a custom genome will likely happen well before it becomes possible to safely rewrite live adult genomes, which is itself a different task from understanding, controlling, or safely re-activating in adults, the developmental pathways that lead to healthy growth within a brain for things as vague as "lust", "empathy", or "intelligence".

But to your previous question, "At what point does it get silly?": at some point, we're all made of atoms, and if we had a level of control over matter as in fictional narratives like The Culture or Star Trek, then (modulo weight changes) all your atoms can be rearranged to turn you into a copy of me, or anyone else on the planet, or any other species including fully customised not-found-in-nature varieties.

I'm reminded of a cover of a Monty Python song:

> Oh, I'm a lycanthrope and I'm okay, I romp all night and I sleep all day.

- http://web.archive.org/web/20080509070613/http://www.swampfo...

Silly is fine :)

>> Nature, in its wisdom chose that that couple should not be able to have offspring.

I think it’s arrogant to claim you know what “nature” chose, if indeed it “chose” anything at all.

Heh. I do not believe so for one reason and one reason only. It is not exactly secret what it chooses on a rather daily basis. That as a race we have managed to remove ourselves somewhat from the grip of that choice is a testament to our arrogance. In other words, I do not think you are accurate. I know, because I see things in front of me. I am uncertain on how you know what you know.

+10 Points. Awful take.

How is it awful? There is already too many humans on this planet and here we are spending resources on bodies that would obviously not even begin to exist save for technology. If anything, I am likely more reasonable here than the emotional gasps of 'ooh science'. Is it an interesting solved challenge? Sure. Is it something that is going to further remove us from reality.. also yes.

We should have twice as many people on this planet. Add we're going to do it, and we're going to feed them, and they're going to come up with ideas and do things. It's going to be even more awesome than it already is

I applaud your optimism and I do not think you are anywhere close to being right.

Naturally. But it won’t matter. The human extinctionists are a self solving problem. I don’t worry that much about them except in making sure we don’t construct individual vetos.

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