CRISPR and other tools aren’t science fiction anymore. If the wealthy get there first, what happens to everyone else?
As someone suffering from a terrible genetic disease that will kill me soon, any amount of preventing these diseases under any circumstances gets a thumbs up from me.
Sadly, the most probable cloning related future would be Gattaca
^(edit typo)
Technology is (at least for now) not exclusive to the rich. There can be billionaires’ secret labs and underground diy labs. Since few science fictions pop up in the topic and CRISPER is mentioned, I am going to leave CRISPER cookbook and Chapter 2 which was written in response to Roe vs Wade.
The plot of the film Gattaca explores this, the idea of what society looks like when there’s a class of genetically engineered, “superior” people, vs. the naturally born, “inferior” class.
Not seen Gattaca, but a multi-tier, genetically structured society is the basis of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, which is well worth a read.
The Beggars Trilogy by Nancy Kress touches on this as well, but is more focused on the issues with superintelligence rather than just gene alteration, although, because people are vain, the preference for things like hair, skin and symmetry also exist in the story’s world. Oh yeah, and the coolest concept from this trilogy is a thing called “sleeplessness”, where people can alter there genes to remove the biological need to sleep, allowing people to be able to be productive for as many hours as they desire.
Is that the movie about (sorry for the bad synopsis) Where the guy vacuums his work desk because he wants to go to space?
That movie is 9/10. The ending is absolutely beautiful.
Okay, but the moral of the story was that “superior” people weren’t actually superior. They were just racist.
The protagonist outwits and outperforms them all.
Seems like a pretty bad execution of the concept, then.
Tbh, I think GATTACA barely touched the topic. It focussed so much on the brothers’ rivalry that you could strip out the genetic engineering part and it’d barely change the movie
I really can’t imagine what China is doing…
Trump is directly undermining national safety by abandoning higher education, college visas for foreigners, scientific studies etc.
15 years ago we knew exactly what China was doing. Now? Good luck
He is in many many ways. Thats what i mean with China.
…did you respond to the wrong comment?
I mean with CRISPR…
Chinese researchers publish in the same international journals everyone does, I don’t think they are using CRISPR any differently than anyone this side of the pacific is.
The verdict said the three defendants had not obtained qualification as doctors, pursued fame and profits, deliberately violated Chinese regulations on scientific research, and crossed an ethical line in both scientific research and medicine, according to Xinhua. It also said they had fabricated ethical review documents.
It’s illegal.
They follow the law?
I doubt any more or less than people here do
Same for Jules Vernes - The Time Machine book in the part where the traveler meets the Morlocks and the Eloi.
Great movie, excellent performances
Shhh!
You’re not supposed to say the quiet part out loud!
Just keep pretending our societies are equitable.
Yes.
But it’s already here. Education is already doing what you’re fearing. Rich people tend to have access to better education and thus having access to better salaries, positions, etc.
Yep. Learned behavior is where human evolution actually happens; it’s our specialization, our niche as big brained, highly social, linguistic apes. Don’t gotta wait for random genetic changes that happen to encode useful new instincts. We just learn them from one another. Significantly speedier.
If rich people go mucking about with their genomes, it’s much more likely to backfire in unforeseen ways than to actually instill any sort of advantage. Genes are a messy, messy, messy means of encoding things.
If rich people go mucking about with their genomes, it’s much more likely to backfire in unforeseen ways
This really resonates with me. No person is that smart or has the level of foresight required to make those kinds of changes effectively (at very least in the long term).
From time to time i think of an author i had enjoyed years ago named Robert Anton Wilson. He was a warped sonofabitch, a Yund i can’t really claim to fully understand his philosophy, but even just as recently as this past week i found myself thinking about a concept he’d discussed at length: the idea that when one is very young, there are “imprints” impressed on your brain that really determine how you think/act/are. He had written a series about attempting to erase ones imprints and replace them with more advantageous ones.
He had spent just as much time warning about the dangers of attempting to do such a thing though. As much as anybody may like to think they know what’s best for themselves or anyone else, it’s astounding now frequently we can be wrong due to lack of information, bad judgement, bias, etc.
The genetic decisions one may choose to make for their offspring may have little/no relevance by the time those offspring arrive. I feel like it could be so much worse though. I imagine this is more like tweaking assembly code, but on an even more complex system that we don’t even fully understand yet. The most hubristic will convince themselves they know best, but i have to imagine reality will prove them wrong every time.
Gonna have to read those, thanks!
True but this will accelerate it i guess.
In Echopraxia, the transhuman pilot repeatedly calls the old guy a “roach”.
“I’ve told you before, Daniel: roach isn’t an insult. We’re the ones still standing after the mammals build their nukes, we’re the ones with the stripped-down OS’s so damned simple they work under almost any circumstances. We’re the goddamned Kalashnikovs of thinking meat.”
― Peter Watts, Echopraxia
And one of my favorite Heinlein quotes:
“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”
― Robert A. Heinlein
Ah once again i wish i read books… I think if I was to pick up a book it would be the novels behind the show The Expanse. I feel like they left a lot out of the show that was in the books.
We did the audiobooks of the expanse and loved them!
Definitely worth the read. The show was a great adaptation with some necessary compromises for a TV adaptation, but also, you have 3 (4) more books beyond season 6.
Aw man really? If there is an incentive to read that’s it.
Planet of the Rich, where the apes are billionaires and everyone else is… pretty much the same.
Here’s a scarier thought, if they can fine tune this shit enough they’ll probably just clone themselves and pull a ship of Theseus on themselves. Removing the only remaining equalizer between them and the rest of humanity.
The rich fucks at the top want to become gods. They won’t call it that but that’s the end game for the ones with the most hand on the wheel.
I’ll be dead, humanity is fucked as i see it but things could change i guess.
Can’t wait for them to make their kids super smart and then their kids call them idiots.
Because they will be smarter haha
Future Man, anyone? This is Biotic shit.
Once again reference to a book?
Nah, a pretty silly comedy tv show. It explores this exact thing. Natural born people are forced to live in the sewers and survive on rats while the Biotics scour all time and space to destroy them.
… or they’re just crazy people who chose to live in the tunnels and have an irrational hatred of hospitals. The biotics only traveled through time to stop them from changing the time line.
Once rich people gain any power or advantage they use it for themselves, often at the expense of others. Survival of the fittest. Another question is if they can effectively clone and gene edit themselves, will they have children with others at all or just make variants of themselves trying for perfection? If life extension technologies become viable, will they bother ,having kids or cloning themselves? These people are completely devoted to the satisfaction of their own egos, which controls them and they will redirect all resources toward their own interests. They are the absolute manifestation of selfishness and are the cautionary tale for why narcissism and egotism are a mental health disorder and not things we should let people run around with. Put them all in a psych ward.
If I’m thinking like them with a huge ego I think they will go and make variants of themselves trying for perfection. Just a guess.
If they live forever, they would likely prefer to reshape the world to fit the parts of themselves they can’t change, rather than passing the opportunity to gratify themselves forever, to someone else, even their own children. Rich and powerful people are absolutely terrible parents. I think their egos are big enough that children are just the best solution when they can’t live forever.
I dont think people will live forever. 300 years yea but not forever. Unless you are talking about replacing everything that fails with something new, then how much of you is the original person?
Whether we can or not, the point was what people might do if.
That’s a worry, but also there’s still a lot of stuff we don’t understand about genetics, and a bunch of grifters who’ll fleece the super wealthy
You already mentioned science fiction, and therein lies your answer. Many of the super rich already think of themselves as better than human or more deserving than others. This new tech will only reinforce the idea because, obviously, only the wealthy will have broad access to it.
What you’ve brought up is a willful choice in future design. And that’s “design” as in both the genetic build of their future children, as well as the redesigned social structure that will be laid out before them.
The idea is, or very soon will be, to make a clear and undeniable ruling class. The wanna-be god kings are already shoring-up forces and hedging their bets as we live and breath. Pharonic rule 2.0 might be just around the corner, folks.
Who was it that said “fear not of man, for all men must die”? Eh. It doesn’t really matter who said it, so much as what it means. Anyone wanting to see to it that these fucks dont get their way, I hope will make sure to remember the meaning of these words. A time may come in which that meaning becomes the most vital of tools in undoing some of the greater evils of this world. No gods. No kings.
None of this is advice. I am not a lawyer. I am not an expert in any field. Etc
Pharonic rule 2.0? Are you talking like Egypt?
The way Egypt was ruled in the distant past, yeah. Not to say it’s a 1:1 comparison ofc, but the similarities, I hope, are evident.
I wouldn’t worry about it … evolution is all about the survival of the luckiest and most fortunate
Sure it is survival of the fittest, strongest and most capable … but often through earth’s history … survival is more often left to the survivors, the lucky few who were just fortunate to survive.
Its the ones that adapt the fastest
I read that as “It’s the ones that adapt the fascist” :(
When?
Why do you think so many use surrogates now?
They’re 100% at least doing illegal selections, but I would be shocked if none of them are doing out right editing.
It already exists im sure, but I guess they take the risks for long-term consequences.
