Re: Nanotech control systems (was Re: Transhuman Beach Party)

Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Fri, 10 Sep 1999 07:59:48 -0500

"Robert J. Bradbury" wrote:
>
> I would never promote doing anything in children, except perhaps
> the correction of a legitimate "defect". But in adults, if I say
> I want a third arm, what right does the medical community or
> the government, have to deny me that, *EVEN* if the success rate
> is only 10%.

Oho! And who gets to decide what a "legitimate defect" is? If an MRI shows that my children lack the Yudkowsky Specialization neurology, can I correct that unnatural-to-me defect via neurosurgery? If I'm not allowed to take infants and introduce Specialization via neurosurgery, or perhaps by genetically engineering the gene in, then it's not a very long step from there to saying I'm not allowed to have natural children that carry the gene, don't you think?

-- 
           sentience@pobox.com          Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
        http://pobox.com/~sentience/tmol-faq/meaningoflife.html
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