[extropy-chat] "Shall we enhance?"

[Damien Broderick]

Dear Ms. Jarvik

You write:

http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,635174444,00.html

"How smart should we be allowed to be? How tall? How happy?"

These are among the strangest and most distressing questions I have ever 
seen printed in a responsible journal, or indeed any outside totalitarian 
societies. "Allowed" by whom? Implicitly, you condone the suggestion that 
someone else has a moral right to reduce or limit my intelligence and 
happiness, or that of my children. Extraordinary!

I assume this is not something you really think, but is purely an artifact 
of journalism's routine but often profoundly misleading "On the one hand, 
on the other". Would you feel equally comfortable writing: "How literate 
should we be allowed to be? How old? How ethical?" Like yours, these are 
all questions more suited to a Taliban theologian, I think, or one of Pol 
Pot's ideologues.

Damien Broderick, PhD
University of Melbourne
Australia