

What should we be worried about? - bra-ket
http://www.edge.org/responses/q2013

======
bcoates
Did a little Googling about issue #1, found this great response taking it
apart: [http://eastasiastudent.net/china/edge-org-chinese-
eugenics-r...](http://eastasiastudent.net/china/edge-org-chinese-eugenics-
rubbish/)

~~~
isaacn
Thanks for finding that link to the rebuttal. The original article certainly
was sensationalizing every little point.

------
diego
The answer would probably be "nothing" or "how should I know?" if that
question was asked without context. Who's "we" anyway? But then Edge expands
the premise for the writers:

"Tell us something that worries you (for scientific reasons), but doesn't seem
to be on the popular radar yet—and why it should be. Or tell us something that
you have stopped worrying about, even if others do, and why it should be taken
off the radar."

I find it silly and vague. They might as well have said "step on your soapbox
and preach, brother/sister."

~~~
dredmorbius
As you note: the context (it's a bit hard to grasp from the link without prior
knowledge): this is a question that was asked numerous leading intellectuals,
as 2013's "Annual Question" by The Edge. The essays are their responses to the
question (I'd initially read the Chinese genocide response as the _only_
response to the question).

I find the presentation a bit difficult to follow as the full essays are
presented on a single page (useful for long reads, difficult to follow if you
want to quickly survey the topics). Without even a table of contents.

Even the overview page only lists contributors, without specifying their topic
or title: [http://www.edge.org/contributors/what-should-we-be-
worried-a...](http://www.edge.org/contributors/what-should-we-be-worried-
about)

I rather agree with your soapbox preacher assessment. I'm underwhelmed by most
of the responses.

------
thebear
What I find interesting is how many respondents name worries that are in or
related to their own profession or field of study. Note that the question is
"What should _we_ be worried about?" So now I am worried that nobody can see
past the edges of their own little world anymore.

~~~
teh
That was my first thought. But why ask people from different fields if you
want a generic answer? I believe the implied question is "tell us something
worrisome you know that the average person doesn't know".

~~~
StavrosK
Exactly. Would it have been as interesting if they all said "global warming"?

~~~
bobsy
I think it would have been more interesting and more scary if there was a
trend amongst people in completely different fields.

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EllaMentry
The site appears to be having some issues: here is the Google Cache version:
[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:NHUs-7...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:NHUs-7uYTaUJ:www.edge.org/responses/q2013)

------
azatris
I think what we actually should worry about is what is the underlying reason
for all this international development.

I am not implying it is wrong, but this is what most of us seem to be aspiring
after - "making the world a better place" (without giving it any further
thought).

But why? Is this really most important? How would we go about finding what is
most important?

------
cinquemb
"Given the Mendelian genetic lottery, the kids produced by any one couple
typically differ by 5 to 15 IQ points. So this method of "preimplantation
embryo selection" might allow IQ within every Chinese family to increase by 5
to 15 IQ points per generation. After a couple of generations, it would be
game over for Western global competitiveness."

So raise the IQ (didn't the western world "invent" this notion?) of a
population so they can be replaced by machines (after all, what use does a
government have for highly intelligent people but to put them to work)?
Because evidently, this is happening in the western world as noted BI,
hollywood, and the technologists of our day.

In a couple generations (60+ years), I think humanity might not be constrained
by resources on this planent alone… after all, I think Elon and his
partners/competitors are going to want to achieve 10x in a fraction of that
time…

~~~
coldtea
> _So raise the IQ (didn't the western world "invent" this notion?) of a
> population so they can be replaced by machines (after all, what use does a
> government have for highly intelligent people but to put them to work)?_

Em, the government is not (necessarily) some "enemy". The government is the
representatives of the people and the country. So the use the government has
for "highly intelligent people" is to strengthen the country.

~~~
cinquemb
I didn't mean for that to come across as the government as an "enemy" (I
didn't mention an enemy of any sort).

>So the use the government has for "highly intelligent people" is to
strengthen the country.

You wouldn't call that work (the effort applied to produce a deliverable or
accomplish a task, which in this case is whatever it takes to "strengthen the
country")?

~~~
coldtea
Well, if you put it that way, yes. But then again, what is NOT work?

------
GnarfGnarf
What should we be worried about?

Peak Oil.

------
michaelochurch
Conclusion: "smart people" (I'm not debating that they are smart, merely
criticizing the institution of "smart people" in this context) don't have any
more of a clue than anyone else.

~~~
reaclmbs
NNT calls them nerds. IQ tests invented by nerds so they could call each other
intelligent.

------
spitx

      "When I learned about Chinese eugenics this summer, I was 
      astonished that its population policies had received so
      little attention. China makes no secret of its eugenic
      ambitions, in either its cultural history or its
      government policies."
    

So little attention indeed. Why is this so little known or debated in the
West? We make a huge deal of the human rights abuses in the rest of the world
every chance we get. Calling the amount of attention that this issue gets in
Western public discourse, scant, is indeed overstating it. There is no
discussion at all.

    
    
      "The most likely response, given Euro-American ideological
       biases, would be a bioethical panic that leads to
       criticism of Chinese population policy with the same
       self-righteous hypocrisy that we have shown in
       criticizing various Chinese socio-cultural policies." 
    

Why do the Chinese get a pass in the respect that the Germans didn't? American
film makers churn out documentaries and feature films about the Third Reich by
the dozen every year. Yet I haven't seen even a single Frontline doc cover
this.

Chinese execute thousands of their "lower classes" every year. This is nothing
but the "cleansing" of the intellectually deficient and the ungainful.

At the very least Western intellectuals and universities should condemn this
and refuse to collaborate or issue professorships and research positions to
Chinese academics in a wholesale fashion (since, as the author put it, "there
is a unusually close cooperation in China between government, academia,
medicine, education, media, parents, and consumerism in promoting a utopian
Han ethno-state.")

However we see nothing of that sort.

Western academics are quick to boycott their Israeli counterparts for the
slightest infractions of voicing support for their Zionist state.

Where is the uproar here?

Source:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment#Global_distr...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment#Global_distribution)

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2012/sep/12/boycott-i...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2012/sep/12/boycott-
israeli-academics-justified)

Edit: Clean-up

~~~
Swizec
It's simple really, Germany was at our doorstep, for many of us it was inside
our house. My great grandmother was in a work camp, my friend's _father_
fought in WW2 and was later imprisoned in Germany for a time.

Germany was _real_. China ... well China is over there, they make cheap things
for us and in return we don't poke at their internal policies. Imagine a
Chinese embargo on the Western world, we'd die.

~~~
wisty
Also, China was an ally. Some of the worst stuff happened under the old
Republic - they pretty much had a policy of genocide against Tibetans in
Sichuan. I don't remember if it was actually the KMT (or some of the warlords
who allied them), but they were quite brutal. Then the KMT fled to Taiwan, and
the CCP became the "bad" guys.

While the CCP has a mixed history, they do relax the One Child Policy for
ethnic minorities (I think Tibetans are allowed 2 children), so it's hard to
suggest they are actually genocidal. Nationalistic, yes, but that nationalism
recognises the rights of minorities (as long as they don't try to rebel). They
did a lot of dodgy stuff in the Cultural Revolution, but it's not like they
are given a free pass on that.

I'm not sure about the Great Leap Forward, but that was more an outrageously
stupid policy decision than a deliberate crime. It only lasted 3 years. While
Mao _should_ have ended it sooner, it's not like he kept it going for 10
years, like the Cultural Revolution. Perhaps it really took 3 years to weed
through the false reports of progress, and to realise it wasn't just growing
pains, sabotage, or natural disasters. Besides, it wasn't really targeted at
any ethnic group - all rural Chinese were hit pretty hard.

------
coldtea
> _After a couple of generations, it would be game over for Western global
> competitiveness._

That's nice. Speaking as a westerner, fuck "western global competitiveness".
Why West should have the upper hand? It's not even 1/5 of the global
population, and it has done the most horrible crimes, from the Holocaust, to
Slavery, to exploiting and colonising the rest 4/5, including fighting China
for the "god given right" to sell opium to its citizens. Time for some
payback.

