As for the article itself, I find myself gravitating towards not trusting Google's (or such org's) motives in this. After all, if such a touchup feature were activated by default, it would skew Google's face dataset away from real faces and embed a notion of "Calli" in their face models.
That sounds incredibly dystopian.
I mean, yes, this hypothetical procedure does sound dystopian on its face (haha). But then again, imagine if you just judged people by how nice they actually were, not by what their face looked like? Imagine if you were evaluated by the merits of your mind, of you, not the 'flawed' representation of you (your face) given to you by your DNA?
I've been helped enormously in almost every area of my life by the way I look and how I'm able to present myself physically. Much of that is because of my DNA -- something I didn't work for or ask for. It was given to me for free. Likewise, others are deprived through no fault of their own. Of course, that's the way it is. I like being attractive and having attractive friends and romantic partners. But what if it didn't matter? Would my life be richer?
Do you believe that accidents of genes (and actions taken by the mother at times) affect brain development? If so, aren't we just moving the problem to a different body part ?
(keeping the devil's advocate train going )
I hope that some day in the future we'll look back on the way poor people are treated now with the same horror we have today if we hear a black or gay person was refused healthcare or another service.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veil_of_ignorance
[2] https://www.hugomontenegro.com/blog/the-absurdity-of-free-wi...
My patchwork strategy nowadays is "Nature is always unfair on the individual level. Leverage your advantages to make life better for those less fortunate." and hope enough people do this to improve the world.
A baseline for human needs ( food, shelter, access to health and opportunities to develop oneself) can be codified into law but we'll always find a way to express those biases at the higher levels IMO.
Which is the best argument for a minimal legal ethical codes. Any system can be hacked, especially those designed by humans. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. So...
That's Harrison Bergeron territory. Sorry, you can't go on a vacation to France because your kids might learn something.
For example, we are currently living the idea of capitalism taken to the extreme, where one man can own a trillion dollars while others can't afford healthcare or education, and it's clearly becoming more and more nonsensical to allow this. Let's try swinging the needle in the other direction for a while.
Citation needed? It's almost-certainly net-enjoyable - but, when you go on to acknowledge that the mere fact of those emotions leads to discrimination against some people, how do you justify this statement other than "those emotions are natural"?
To be clear, I am _not_ saying that I would support mandatory calli - forcibly changing someone's neurological responses is an astonishingly dangerous precedent to set; as another commenter points out, that would be terribly dystopian - but I don't think I can agree with your specific statement.
Regardless - this sounds like a fascinating story, I'll have a look - thanks!
It's important to note that we're hard wired because it was evolutionary beneficial to "push out" people who look bad/incorrect/not-normal. If you have a gene that mutates then it's possible you could have other mutations that make you not suitable reproductively so it became ingrained to avoid those who look bad to get genes that would produce more fit offspring.
Basically, it's about a reversible procedure called "calli" that turns off the neurological response to symmetry, smoothness, and "aesthetic" of a human face. So someone with the procedure can recognize different faces, but they don't feel any better about a pretty face than an ugly one.
The story follows a girl who had calli done as a young child, and then decided to go to college with it turned off. When she's there, there's a push on campus to mandate the procedure, to combat "lookism." The story is written like a documentary film, so it has little snippets of interviews, news articles, etc. about the debate.
The range of emotions we get from looking at other people's faces is intrinsically worth saving. But, people get a huge advantage from being good-looking. It's effectively discrimination to consider people who are good looking more trustworthy, nicer, etc, yet all of us do -- it's hard wired. The world is not really fair to someone with a bad looking face.
These apps aren't calli but they do mediate how we see the world, ourselves, and others to a huge degree. I don't envy any middle school girl who has to navigate this landscape. Anyway, I highly recommend the story, it was such an interesting way of looking at the issue.