I believe that you want to deploy this technology in a way that avoids coercions and avoids racism. The problem is that you aren’t in charge of society: once the tech is out there, you don’t get a large say in how it gets used. Those decisions go to the public in the case of democracies, and to a handful of scumbags in the case of dictatorships and oligarchies.
A quick look through history will show that basically anytime one group of people sees another group as genetically or racially inferior, discrimination and atrocities result. I see no reason to think that this trend will not continue if we create new groups of people. If Bulgarians embrace genetic “amplification”, to improve their “intelligence” and “morals”, but Romanians ban it, human history indicates that Bulgarians will look at Romanians as their inferiors, and treat them accordingly.
The problem is that you aren’t in charge of society: once the tech is out there, you don’t get a large say in how it gets used.
Right. That’s why I’m not like “hm let me write down a list of good things to do with this technology and allow those, and write down a list of bad things to ban, and then that solves everything”. Instead I’m like “ok, there’s a big set of questions around how society can take stances around this technology; let’s figure out whether and how such a stance can actually result in overwhelmingly good outcomes for humanity—i.e. figure out what that stance is, and figure out how to figure it out (e.g. who to bring in to give voice to), figure out how to get to society having that stance, etc.”. See for example https://berkeleygenomics.org/articles/Genomic_emancipation_contra_eugenics.html
Regarding your second paragraph, I’d appreciate some metadata. For example, is this a worry that you’re just now thinking of? Is it something you’ve investigated a bunch and have a lot of detail about? Is this something you feel confident about, or not? Is this something you’re interested in thinking about? Are you putting this forward as a compelling reason to not investigate more about whether reprogenetics should be a top cause (as opposed, for example, to one major downside risk that would have to be considered and evaluated as part of such an investigation)?
I don’t feel very worried about it because in fact these children would be quite varied in themselves as a class, and there would be quite a lot of variation, so that there’s no clear distinction between kids resulting from reprogenetics vs. not. See the diagram in this subsection: https://berkeleygenomics.org/articles/Genomic_emancipation.html#intelligence Further, by default these kids would have varied backgrounds, grow up in different places, etc. But, maybe it’s a more likely risk than I’m guessing at the moment.
That said, I do think it’s very important, for this and many other reasons, to make reprogenetic technologies very accessible (inexpensive, widespread, legal, functional, safe, applicable to anyone), so that there isn’t siloing into some small class. I also want this technology to be developed and deployed in a liberal, diverse democracy first, for this reason and for other reasons.
I believe that you want to deploy this technology in a way that avoids coercions and avoids racism. The problem is that you aren’t in charge of society: once the tech is out there, you don’t get a large say in how it gets used. Those decisions go to the public in the case of democracies, and to a handful of scumbags in the case of dictatorships and oligarchies.
A quick look through history will show that basically anytime one group of people sees another group as genetically or racially inferior, discrimination and atrocities result. I see no reason to think that this trend will not continue if we create new groups of people. If Bulgarians embrace genetic “amplification”, to improve their “intelligence” and “morals”, but Romanians ban it, human history indicates that Bulgarians will look at Romanians as their inferiors, and treat them accordingly.
Right. That’s why I’m not like “hm let me write down a list of good things to do with this technology and allow those, and write down a list of bad things to ban, and then that solves everything”. Instead I’m like “ok, there’s a big set of questions around how society can take stances around this technology; let’s figure out whether and how such a stance can actually result in overwhelmingly good outcomes for humanity—i.e. figure out what that stance is, and figure out how to figure it out (e.g. who to bring in to give voice to), figure out how to get to society having that stance, etc.”. See for example https://berkeleygenomics.org/articles/Genomic_emancipation_contra_eugenics.html
Regarding your second paragraph, I’d appreciate some metadata. For example, is this a worry that you’re just now thinking of? Is it something you’ve investigated a bunch and have a lot of detail about? Is this something you feel confident about, or not? Is this something you’re interested in thinking about? Are you putting this forward as a compelling reason to not investigate more about whether reprogenetics should be a top cause (as opposed, for example, to one major downside risk that would have to be considered and evaluated as part of such an investigation)?
Anyway, on the object level, I’m interested in thinking about it. I mentioned a class of such worries here https://berkeleygenomics.org/articles/Potential_perils_of_germline_genomic_engineering.html#internal-misalignment but haven’t investigated that particular worry.
I don’t feel very worried about it because in fact these children would be quite varied in themselves as a class, and there would be quite a lot of variation, so that there’s no clear distinction between kids resulting from reprogenetics vs. not. See the diagram in this subsection: https://berkeleygenomics.org/articles/Genomic_emancipation.html#intelligence Further, by default these kids would have varied backgrounds, grow up in different places, etc. But, maybe it’s a more likely risk than I’m guessing at the moment.
That said, I do think it’s very important, for this and many other reasons, to make reprogenetic technologies very accessible (inexpensive, widespread, legal, functional, safe, applicable to anyone), so that there isn’t siloing into some small class. I also want this technology to be developed and deployed in a liberal, diverse democracy first, for this reason and for other reasons.