From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Sun Jan 05 2003 - 10:39:43 MST
Hal Finney presents an argument that might be read as suggesting
that since the total number of humans born will be approximately
constant anyway, cloning should be forbidden in order to stimulate
adoption, and to increase the incentive of fertile people to have
children.
It is not at all clear that the freedom of an individual to
seek to obtain a clone should be abrogated for any reason,
least of all a statistically flawed one. It can by no means
be calculated that fertile couples will have more children in
order to offer them up for adoption, nor that people desiring
children of their own genetic makeup will freely accept a
substitute. As is so often the case, global utilitarian
theories fail to match the benefits that obtain when people
are free to choose.
> Maybe it's not necessary to explore those esoteric notions of identity
> in order to make my point. Try looking at the cloning issue from the
> point of view of maximizing extropy. We want there to be the greatest
> number of people with the greatest potential for growing and changing and
> improving themselves. Whether cloning advances extropy or not depends
> on the specifics.
That is certainly reasonable and correct. It is also quite
controversial, and I commend your boldness.
> If I am right..., it suggests to me that we aren't really worried
> about birth defects and issues of consent per se; but rather, we
> object to cloning precisely because there is an alternative.
> It's not that giving birth in a manner which is dangerous to the
> child is wrong in itself, but that doing so is wrong when there
> are less dangerous ways of accomplishing the same thing.
Indeed, an individual wishing to bring a child into existence
perhaps should explore the possibility using "natural" means,
even up to the point, if we had freedom, of paying someone else
to conceive and bear a child. But whose choice should this be?
Should this choice be decided at the global level, and laws
written to force individuals to forego cloning or contracting
others?
I think that the answer is obviously "no". The urge to legislate
choices of this nature springs from an unhealthy desire on people's
part to dictate their own moral tastes to others.
> This fits into the Extropian framework as I described above. We object
> to cloning because it gives birth to a child who has less potential for
> a satisfying life, less potential extropy, than a child who is born
> via other reproductive mechanisms. But if there is no alternative,
> then giving birth by cloning is the choice that maximizes extropy.
Again, this is correct. Only you have left unsaid who it is who
will be allowed to determine whether this alternative exists.
The important question is, as it is so frequently, "who decides?".
> This line of reasoning leads to the same result I suggested before,
> that if cloning allows for the birth of additional "net" babies than if
> this technology is not used, it actually increases the total extropy
> and should be supported. But if it does not, if the total number of
> babies born would be about the same (say, because infertile parents
> adopt children, which creates incentives that slightly increase birth
> rates among fertile people), then cloning reduces extropy, and we as
> Extropians would conclude that it is wrong.
I cannot argue one bit with your logic. Thanks for the clear analysis.
Lee
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