From: Hal Finney (hal@finney.org)
Date: Mon Jan 06 2003 - 19:53:59 MST
Damien Broderick writes:
> Suppose a grown phocomelus wishes to have a child just like
> herself? This might be arranged via access to thalidomide at her embryo's
> appropriate developmental stage. Is this a right course of conduct? Ought
> other adults in the vicinity to intervene to prevent it? If thalidomide
> doesn't work, might she then ethically truncate the baby's limbs by surgery
> to ensure that she has brought into existence some more people like herself,
> with her special rich idiosyncratic way of being-in-the-world?
That's a great question. It very well illustrates the complex issues
involving reproduction. And again, rather than immediately asking whether
we should permit this in others, first ask what we would do in her shoes.
In this situation the answer may seem obvious, but as Damien goes on to
show, there are variations where things are not so clear.
> (I should
> stress at once that this is a thought experiment; I don't know of any tragic
> victim of thalidomide who would consider for a moment doing this to another
> human. But we know that many congenitally deaf or dwarfed people are eager
> to do the equivalent.)
That's very true, this issue has arisen already in certain communities.
What seem to outsiders as deformities and limitations are seen by them
as characteristics that define their way of life. We had some good
discussion here a few months ago when there was that TV show about a
couple of different deaf families that were debating whether to correct
their children's hearing with cochlear implants.
It's not a simple issue. And looking forward, what happens if everyone
else starts enhancing their children with some kind of neural interface
that makes them seem inhuman? Is it really wrong for someone to say
that they want their kids to grow up the same way as their ancestors
have done? It might not be Extropian, but I think we can all recognize
the discomfort that someone would feel if they knew their children were
going to be fundamentally unlike them, foreign in some way.
For a good example of this, see the story by list member Charles Stross
and boingboing.net editor Cory Doctorow, "Jury Service", which they
generously put online at
http://scifi.com/scifiction/originals/originals_archive/stross-doctorow/stross-doctorow1.html.
The image of the bulging brain-enhanced three year olds was a bit much
even for me to take, alternating between rolling around trying to grab
their feet and building a bootleg long baseline radio telescope out of
their smart wallpaper. I wouldn't necessarily want my kids to grow up
like that, even though I might be handicapping them compared to the rest
of society.
> But is it easier to reach a personal or public policy
> conclusion about such a case than it is for the imposition of what one might
> construe as mental deformities, via strict upbringing in preposterous or
> harmful memetic systems? And which of us should then 'scape whipping?
I think this is in part where Lee Corbin is coming from, that if we start
forbidding people to have children with certain characteristics, we would
be on a slippery slope to banning any politically incorrect upbringing.
Raising kids is a hard business. I welcome discussion about how we should
consider the tradeoffs between possible enhancements and possible dangers.
How will we decide whether some new technology is worth the risks? These
are questions which we can discuss productively in terms of what each of
us would choose, without having to decide what other people can do.
Hal
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