RE: Bioethicists Debate Post-humanity, Yale, June 27

From: Peter C. McCluskey (pcm@rahul.net)
Date: Wed Jun 25 2003 - 14:32:52 MDT

  • Next message: Adrian Tymes: "RE: Bioethicists Debate Post-humanity, Yale, June 27"

     mez@apexnano.com (Ramez Naam) writes:
    >From: Adrian Tymes [mailto:wingcat@pacbell.net]
    >> ...okay, I'm spacing here. There's a standard retort
    >> to the fear that genetic enhancement will lead to a
    >> single genotype becoming dominant - much moreso, by a
    >> much higher percentage (at least of those with access
    >> to this) having more 9s in their 99.999...% similar
    >> DNA, than is presently the norm - with the remaining
    >> holdouts becoming discriminated against for that
    >> reason alone. But I forget what that retort is just
    >> now.
    >
    >I'm not aware of a standard retort here. If there is one I'd like to
    >hear it.

     I don't know what the standard retort is, but one obvious approach is
    to figure out why evolution has produced diverse genes rather than one
    dominant genotype. Genetic engineering doesn't appear to alter the
    incentives that organisms have to adopt or avoid diverse strategies.
     The literature on why sexual reproduction exists might help. It has
    some obvious costs to the organisms that adopted it. The best explanation
    I've read for what benefits justify those costs is that for organisms
    that reproduce slowly, diversity is an important strategy for avoiding
    disease. Bacteria and viruses evolve fast enough that if they only need
    to target one genotype, they can adapt to its weaknesses well enough to
    make that genotype uncompetitive with a species that has a large number
    of genotypes with different weaknesses.
     Even if disease ceases to be a problem for humans, there are plenty of
    similar ways that diversity can be rewarded. For instance, if most parents
    in 1930 decided to optimize the personalities of their children for
    popular occupations such as farming, and a handful choose to optimize
    for rocket scientists, the rocket scientists kids would have gotten
    even larger salaries than was actually the case because they would be
    in such short supply. And if everyone tried to breed rocket scientists,
    the farmer salaries would rise.

    -- 
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    http://www.rahul.net/pcm | the President, or that we are to stand by the
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