Re:Toxic people could become a reality, scientists researchi...
by nradov on Tuesday March 30, 2021 @08:48PM
(#26642320)
There's no free lunch. Every significant enhancement comes with a corresponding disadvantage. Otherwise millions of years of evolution would have produced something better already.
For example, partial genetic immunity to malaria carries an increased risk of syckle cell anemia. Most traits are like that to an extent.
Re:Toxic people could become a reality, scientists researchi...
by dwaltrip on Wednesday March 31, 2021 @12:30AM
(#26643541)
Humans can imagine and create things that never had the appropriate conditions under which they could evolve. The possibility space has not been fully explored.
Re:Toxic people could become a reality, scientists researchi...
by msla on Tuesday March 30, 2021 @11:39PM
(#26643264)
> There's no free lunch. Every significant enhancement comes with a corresponding disadvantage. Otherwise millions of years of evolution would have produced something better already.
And yet the nerve to my retina is still installed backwards.
Make your children better than theirs. Smarter? Less likely to get diseases? Who knows. The point is, now your side has the edge, so they have to keep up. Maybe they get the edge next, so you have to innovate. And so on. Assuming there's sufficient "headroom" to build up these genetic transhumans, and we don't run into some no-free-lunch scenario where improvement is either impossible or comes with unavoidable nasty side-effects, you can't just sit still. You have to continue to improve or you can no longer pretend that all people are created equal in certain important respects. Morally equal, yes, but "morally equal" doesn't get you a leadership position.