[ExI] article about Rafal and his daughter

[Gadersd]

Thank you Jason. You precisely explained my misgivings regarding gene manipulation and saved me the effort of writing it all out. I am especially concerned with issue #3. Diversity and uniqueness of experience is something I value perhaps more than anything else. Maximizing some features always comes at the cost of something else which may be quite valuable to some. If everyone were an Einstein who would want to be a farmer or artist? Some people may see a world full of genius physicists as inherently better, but others may lament the potential loss of creativity among others.

> On Jun 24, 2022, at 10:44 AM, Jason Resch via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
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> 
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> On Thu, Jun 23, 2022, 11:32 PM Rafal Smigrodzki via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org <mailto:extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>> wrote:
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> 
> On Thu, Jun 23, 2022 at 8:58 PM Gadersd via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org <mailto:extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>> wrote:
> I should clarify that I approve selecting one embryo over another if there is a very significant genetic downside with one such as down syndrome. Selecting one embryo over another for a very slight improvement irks me for previously mentioned reasons.
> 
> ### Let's say you are faced with two possible courses of action:
> 
> A) Results in X% risk of disease, trivial or severe, or inconvenience or other unpleasantness afflicting your child
> B) Results in X+1% risk of risk of the above outcomes
> 
> Assume the costs of either action are the same and there is no impact on you or third parties except through the different effects on your child.
> 
> Are you telling me there is a plausible situation where taking option B is preferable to option A? Under what ethics?
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> To play devil's advocate:
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> 1. These ethics implicitly assume we know better than nature. Some things we may interpret as a disease may offer survival advantages for the group, or in different environmental conditions different from those we are presently in, and by eliminating those genes we may inadvertently weaken the survivability of the species.
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> 2. The economic pressures it will impose on those who refuse to genetically select their children (e.g. as in gattaca), it indirectly removes the choice, or at minimum imposes a very high cost for refusal, for all parents.
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> 3. It will reduce the number of unique people and genes that will exist across the multiverse. If the same deterministic algorithm is used to find the best sperm and egg sample between any two parents, it drastically shrinks the diversity of unique individuals who will be born somewhere in reality. Is this a good thing? Not sure but it I can see downsides to it, mostly relating to the difference in trade offs between "exploration and exploitation" or "diversity of experiences vs. quality of experiences".
> 
> There are surely certain universally bad diseases, like fatal early childhood ones. But how abd where do we draw the line?
> 
> How do we determine when there are no compensatory benefits for what some consider a disease? E.g. if some genes cause someone to develop rashes easily, a dermatologist might say it's a disease, but an immunologist might later find their overactive immune system gives them immunity to a wide range of certain novel diseases. Can we accurately weigh such unknowns?
> 
> Gene manipulation of our own species is an area where we must tread cautiously as our power vastly outstrips our wisdom in this area, and some bells can't be unrung.
> 
> Jason
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