I've been thinking about a related technology, human genetic engineering. Imagine if you had a class of the ultra-rich who were all spliced in with the mighty mouse gene, so they were genetically superior physically to the common man? What would that world look like where certain forms of superiority can be bought and sold and then those bloodlines are just fundamentally different and engineered to be superior forever? What sort of risks could that pose? Some apparent genetic defects are actually protection against things, and for example humans with the mighty mouse gene would be much less survivable during a famine compared to humans who don't have that gene. Could an entire class of people genetically engineer themselves in such a way that they've painted themselves into a corner and die out despite ostensibly being superior in every way?
Back to Eugenics, something doesn't quite sound right with the hatred intellectuals have for natural evolution. It claims that humans are always just a short distance away from becoming invalids because we're letting our stupid evolution guide us, but evolution has done pretty well for us for billions of years that got us here, so is the problem here not in reality that it's something important they don't control?
Experts seem to hate markets. It's something they don't control that does a very good job at things that typically experts can't because it's a really complicated set of problems. In that sense, evolution seems like another system they don't like that nonetheless does a very good job at optimizing a really complicated set of problems, but leaves control out of experts hands. The thing is, evolution has an inherent memory of the past. It "remembers" that we faced challenges no history book talks about. It lived through those things and those humans lived through those things and our genes were selected for, brutally.
It's something I've been thinking of more and more lately, that we need a return to some level of intellectual humility; We need to stop thinking we're Gods and understand that we're wrong quite often and so tinkering with creation isn't something that will have the outcomes we'd like to think as we imagine ourselves as perfect.
The article talks about environmentalism, and I talk quite often about its failings. People who think they're the smartest humans to have ever lived try to force through policies that would undoubtedly kill billions because they don't actually know as much as they think. (That isn't to think that all environmentalism is wrong, but more that we need to base our priorities in humility rather than hubris and arrogance, letting nature do its thing)
Back to Eugenics, something doesn't quite sound right with the hatred intellectuals have for natural evolution. It claims that humans are always just a short distance away from becoming invalids because we're letting our stupid evolution guide us, but evolution has done pretty well for us for billions of years that got us here, so is the problem here not in reality that it's something important they don't control?
Experts seem to hate markets. It's something they don't control that does a very good job at things that typically experts can't because it's a really complicated set of problems. In that sense, evolution seems like another system they don't like that nonetheless does a very good job at optimizing a really complicated set of problems, but leaves control out of experts hands. The thing is, evolution has an inherent memory of the past. It "remembers" that we faced challenges no history book talks about. It lived through those things and those humans lived through those things and our genes were selected for, brutally.
It's something I've been thinking of more and more lately, that we need a return to some level of intellectual humility; We need to stop thinking we're Gods and understand that we're wrong quite often and so tinkering with creation isn't something that will have the outcomes we'd like to think as we imagine ourselves as perfect.
The article talks about environmentalism, and I talk quite often about its failings. People who think they're the smartest humans to have ever lived try to force through policies that would undoubtedly kill billions because they don't actually know as much as they think. (That isn't to think that all environmentalism is wrong, but more that we need to base our priorities in humility rather than hubris and arrogance, letting nature do its thing)
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