[ExI] Are we getting too blase here on the list, about scientific and technological progress?

[Stuart LaForge]

> To me, it's not things like high tech cars or high tech anything.  It's
> high tech people. Thousands of studies are showing the genetic bases of
> human traits like kindness and happiness. Thus these things are
> programmable/heritable, or will be, with CRISPR or other new techniques.
> So the question that I asked when I first joined this list, and is still
> unanswered is:  just what do we want future people to be like; how will
> they interact with unprogrammed people; and how do we achieve those
> goals?

I am but one voice among many but since you asked, I hope future people
will be EVERY possible way. Homogeneity whether it be genetic, cultural,
or economic is brittle in the long run and is ultimately a recipe for
extinction. I want diversity and redundancy.

Eugenics failed disastrously because its premises were flawed. There can
be no master race or superior genetics in the long term. There is only
fitness. And fitness is contingent upon an ever-changing environment,
always relative to ones competition, and is often subjective in the eyes
of potential mates during sexual selection.

As an alternative to eugenics, I would propose the concept of agoragenics.
That is a fancy Greek way of saying the "genetics of the marketplace".
What genes and associated traits should someone have? The most useful and
valuable that they can afford. There is no more need to centrally plan the
future evolution of humanity than there is to centrally plan the economy.
In fact, any attempt to do so is likely to meet with disaster as Nazism
did.

Instead, we should allow maximal morphological and functional freedom by
whatever means possible and let supply, demand, and healthy competition
sort out the winners from the losers. And if that means that humanity
evolves into numerous different species, then so much the better.

Why should people adapted to outer space, the deep sea, or another planet
be expected to resemble baseline humans? Let the stars be colonized by
post-human machines, cyborgs, exotic biological humanoids and whatever
other forms the children of men can dream up for themselves. The attempt
must be made. To try to stay as we are in a changing universe is certain
doom.

Stuart LaForge