> I don't know if you've noticed, but we haven't destroyed ourselves with nuclear weapons, despite giving it a fairly good go for five decades

Five decades is nothing in historical terms, and it was by no means a foregone conclusion that nuclear weapons would not be used in that time period. The reason they have not has been due to extraordinary effort, chance, and non-proliferation efforts. The future decades and centuries look much grimmer unless we can dismantle existing stockpiles and do what we can to enjoin future generations to not create them.

> The Cold War is over.

The Cold War is over, but the Pax Americana enforced by American hegemony will not last forever. If history teaches us anything, it is that all peacetimes eventually end.

> Sounds good enough for me. Fuck cancer, fuck heart disease, fuck diabetes, fuck obesity. Full steam ahead!

If eliminating heart disease means the extinction of human beings, or the death and suffering of billions of others, is that really worthwhile to you? What if heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and obesity can eventually be dealt with through other, safer, means?

But will those benefits be shared equally? How do you feel about current class inequality being split further into a select "super race" of a beautiful, genius-IQ, long-living 1% vs... the rest?

The weaponry cold war did happen: how do you feel about a genetic enhancements cold war?

I feel it's better than nobody having it.

That might be true for awhile but technology tends to become cheaper and more available over time, barring artificial constraints like the types of regulations on drugs in America (which is a social issue, not a tech issue).

Then of course the risk is that a lack of genetic diversity wipes people out all at once, so some care is needed.

Also there already is a competition to become super beautiful, it's called sexual selection.

15 years ago, only the super wealthy had big flatscreen TVs. Now everyone's got them. If it takes 15 years to go from only the super wealthy having gene enhancements to everyone having them, that would be fine by me.