When rich people can edit their kids DNA won't that just lock everyone else out and create a new class?
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Same for H. G. Wells- The Time Machine book in the part where the traveler meets the Morlocks and the Eloi.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Time_Machine
EDIT: Got my authors mixed up, it wasn't Jules Verne.
H. G. Wells wrote The Time Machine, not Verne.
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CRISPR and other tools aren’t science fiction anymore. If the wealthy get there first, what happens to everyone else?
We need to make CRISPR as easy as 3D printing. Open source genetic modification.
Sure, we'll get lunatics making doomsday viruses in their basement, but also other lunatics designing vaccines for them you can make with your own desktop bioreactor.
More importantly, we'll also get people turning themselves into catgirls.
Screw cyberpunk; biopunk's where it's at.
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Spoilers!
I HAVE SPOILED NOTHING.
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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.
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They already have. The few very rich friends I have (money is no object people) are all great at pretending to have empathy but their actions belie them
Yep, they'll act like they care, think that they care, but put the mildest of obstacles in front of them and they'll throw a poor person into a meat grinder to avoid it. People who grew up with money have no character or idea how to weather any kind of hardship
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We need to make CRISPR as easy as 3D printing. Open source genetic modification.
Sure, we'll get lunatics making doomsday viruses in their basement, but also other lunatics designing vaccines for them you can make with your own desktop bioreactor.
More importantly, we'll also get people turning themselves into catgirls.
Screw cyberpunk; biopunk's where it's at.
Naw I think its wetware.
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CRISPR and other tools aren’t science fiction anymore. If the wealthy get there first, what happens to everyone else?
Shhh!
You're not supposed to say the quiet part out loud!
Just keep pretending our societies are equitable.
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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.
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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.
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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!
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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.
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For the kinds of class based gene editing we are likely to see, it kinda isn't. More attractive, bigger boobs, better predisposition to fitness, etc. That is all surmountable.
Where it falls apart are "goofy" looking people likely Michael Phelps who are straight up genetic freaks. But those aren't the kinds of genes the rich want... For themselves.
I mean, I would expect the first thing they would want to edit would be things like intelligence, level of optimisim/happiness, ability to be a social butterfly, ability to delay gratification and stick to long term goals, etc. In addition to being smokin' hot, of course.
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Seems like a pretty bad execution of the concept, then.
That's the joke tbh.
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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.
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CRISPR and other tools aren’t science fiction anymore. If the wealthy get there first, what happens to everyone else?
wrote last edited by [email protected]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.
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Spoilers!
wrote last edited by [email protected]If you insist:
::: spoiler spoiler
Jude Law is in it
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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.
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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.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Sadly, the most probable cloning related future would be Gattaca
^(edit typo)
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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.
Yeah, I think we should probably allow the technology that will prevent people being born with these diseases first, and then worry about how we're going to deal with the other stuff. This technology isn't going to be possible to hold back indefinitely anyway.
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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!
