What if being particularly intelligent makes people less happy?
Funny how people never raise this as an argument against preventing lead poisoning.
Hereās a parity principle I think we should all accept: if we would encourage prospective parents to undertake environmental precautions or modifications to shift the balance of probabilities for their future child in a certain way, we should encourage them to pursue the same ends via genetic means.
I donāt assume that every form of ādivergenceā from ātypicalā functioning is necessarily a disability or health problem. There will always be unclear or controversial cases about which reasonable people can disagree. But there are also very clear cases, like Tay-Sachs disease, which we should obviously want to prevent if we can (including via embryonic selection or gene editing).
Agreed on Tay-Sachs and other diseases which cause suffering.
Thatās not the same as gene-editing and embryo selection for āsmarterā kids. Thatās making a moral judgement about the value of someoneās life based on their intelligence. By your logic, if we tell people not to drink alcohol when pregnant, then we should also prevent those with lower intelligence from passing on their genes?
No, I support genetic reproductive freedom, not coercion. This is all a bit off-topic here though, so perhaps you can follow-up over at the linked post if you want to discuss this more.
Funny how people never raise this as an argument against preventing lead poisoning.
Hereās a parity principle I think we should all accept: if we would encourage prospective parents to undertake environmental precautions or modifications to shift the balance of probabilities for their future child in a certain way, we should encourage them to pursue the same ends via genetic means.
I donāt assume that every form of ādivergenceā from ātypicalā functioning is necessarily a disability or health problem. There will always be unclear or controversial cases about which reasonable people can disagree. But there are also very clear cases, like Tay-Sachs disease, which we should obviously want to prevent if we can (including via embryonic selection or gene editing).
Agreed on Tay-Sachs and other diseases which cause suffering.
Thatās not the same as gene-editing and embryo selection for āsmarterā kids. Thatās making a moral judgement about the value of someoneās life based on their intelligence. By your logic, if we tell people not to drink alcohol when pregnant, then we should also prevent those with lower intelligence from passing on their genes?
No, I support genetic reproductive freedom, not coercion. This is all a bit off-topic here though, so perhaps you can follow-up over at the linked post if you want to discuss this more.