[ExI] morals

Tue Jan 22 17:31:43 UTC 2019

From: extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace
Subject: Re: [ExI] morals

Well, shoot, Spike - I was hoping to get a ponder out of you.  bill w

BillW, you did get a ponder outta me: at moral dilemmas, I recognize that I suck.  There are no equations for that.  My area of expertise is in setting up and solving systems of differential equations, making diagrams to model and improve control systems, that sorta thing.  In the area of ethics, I am completely lost.  None of the tools I have spent my life learning how to master are of any value in that field.  I am as out of my element as an astronaut on horseback (who doesn’t know how to ride a horse.)

I will listen carefully to what others write on this topic.  Recognizing that genetic manipulation probably would lead to solutions to unknown numbers of medical conditions and new therapies while simultaneously being unethical, I might suggest end-runs around the problem.  Example: studying the DNA those who have a particular condition and comparing to the DNA of those who do not, then use our equations (yaaaaay!) to see if we can extract some answers.  That way we get to solutions (much slower perhaps) without risk of actually causing some horrifying medical condition.

This approach is not free of its own moral and ethical dilemmas.  If we go this route and find solutions, those who are born with horrifying medical conditions during the period we were searching could have been spared.  But only in a sense: the person with the detectable genetic condition might not have been born at all.  We would discover the condition in the embryonic stage, then choose instead one of the sibling embryos.

See there BillW, I wasn’t kidding: I really don’t have the answers.  I have some cool questions however.

spike

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20190122/780dde94/attachment.html>