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Comment by sothatsit | Hacker News Reader

There will definitely be negatives to technology like this. But the negatives are not going to be these ridiculous scenarios...

It might be stuff like an increased cultural focus on some genetics being "better" than others. Or an increased genetic divide between the rich and the poor over generations. Or unintended consequences where we make mistakes and cause new diseases or problems for the people that are being genetically modified.

But the chance of governments intervening in this seems low, other than maybe to require people to not select for bad traits or to put more restrictions on this technology (as many have already done).

And the idea of genetically engineering an under-class is equally absurd. Who would buy-in to that? It’s so obviously ethically evil. If we live in free countries with free press, this is just not going to happen.

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> And the idea of genetically engineering an under-class is equally absurd. Who would buy-in to that?

Artificial selection of slaves has already existed in the US historicially with chattel slavery. It is merely one regime change away

Such policies would be incredibly unpopular, so you would need a true tyrant to make it happen. And even then, genetic editing would be a very expensive and slow option compared to just regular forms of oppression. Can that tyrant keep power for the decades it will take for them to get their subservient work-force?

It seems very unlikely that poorer countries with dictators would have the skilled workforce, competence, and resources to pull this off. Perhaps some wealthy authoritarian states like the UAE could do it, but it would still require a massive effort for it to happen. And why bother when they can just import labour instead?

Such policies will be popular as long as eugenics-apoligists like yourself exist. Gene editing is not slow at all compared to breeding programs of chattel slavery, and it is not subject to short-term economic and military conditions like ordinary dictatorships are. Once it is unlocked, you have a pathway to creating an underclass that can NEVER revolt.

Poor countries can just outsource the task to the first world in the same way they outsource surveilance today. Bred slaves are more subserviant and better workers, 4/5 genetic engineers agree!

It won't happen explicitly of course. The root comment mentioned "depression", for example, which is at least in part caused by inadequate work-life balance, poor quality of life in general, lack of social fabric, etc... So if you would genetically engineer people to be less depressed, even if you just empirically looked at what genes depressed people have in today's world (as the root comment is proposing), you could end up engineering people that are OK with working long hours for little pay, eating slop, sitting at home doing nothing, never socializing with anyone, obedient to their boss, etcetera etcetera. This would be, in effect, "genetically engineering an under-class", yet it would be easy to defend in the newspapers by just saying "we're only getting rid of depression, how can you be against it?" It's just a logical conclusion if you can think more than two steps ahead.

I agree that this could happen, but this is more unintended consequences and less specifically genetically engineering an under-class.

If the outcome is the same does it matter that there was never a secretive cabal organizing it behind the scenes? You'll happily march towards a dystopia because at least noone intended it to be that way? Is it really unintended if we can foresee it right now and decide to go ahead anyway? I don't get this attitude at all.

The outcome is not the same!

If it is unintended, then when we notice it happening we will change course. We will see that the specific gene edits had negative effects, and we will avoid those gene edits in the future. The effect size will probably also be a lot lower than if you were specifically aiming to make people as agreeable and authority-following as possible.

Additionally, the people with the gene edits would only make up only a small percentage of all the people in a society. They will get some form of herd immunity when combined with people born naturally, older generations, and people without the gene edit.

This is a dramatically different situation to someone intentionally trying to engineer a servant class.

I think you're dangerously naive, anyway I don't think I can convince you (or you me ;), let's agree to disagree. Thanks for your thoughts either way.

"Who wants to buy that?"... really?

Elon Musk is trying very hard to produce robots and failing... imagine if it had access to a tech that solved all the hard problems, like making senses that work, vision, smell, etc... just keeping those beings "dumb enough" that they obey order... what if... we could just use humans and re-engineer them to obey...

"free countries with free press" haha. The guy bought the US election ("the #1 democracy in the world") for $250M

The cost, complexity, and logistics of genetically engineering millions of people, and raising them, is astronomical. That's not to mention the level of backlash someone would receive for this would be unbelievable. This genuinely feels like something people would go to war over.

It just doesn't make sense. It is much cheaper and easier to just pay already-living people to work for you, instead of waiting decades and spending millions of dollars genetically engineering and raising each person, just in the hope that they then decide to work for you. That's just ridiculous.

The appeal of robotics is that the robots cost $30,000, you can build them on an assembly line, and they do not have emotions so will happily complete repetitive tasks over and over again all day and night. Comparing that to the cost of raising children, genetically engineering them, and coercing them into working for you is just insane. The maths do not work out at all, never mind the fact that it would require a logistical marvel to actually make this happen, and you would require immense amounts of power to not be stopped.

From every single angle this just doesn't make any sense at all.

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