

The Future of Education: Genetic Enhancement and Metahumanities [pdf] - Thevet
http://jetpress.org/v25.1/sorgner.pdf

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hyperion2010
The author only mentions heritability once in the article. While educational
attainment is also heritable people tend to view it as 'extrinsic.' The
seemingly intrinsic nature of genetic modification is largely what drives
moral reactions against it and the fact that any offspring will also retain
those changes. This is of course also true for extrinsic factors that are also
heritable but due to the quirk that human beings have a sense of their bodily
self which is distinct from the rest of the universe we tend to distinguish
between the two (probably to our detriment). That said people trying to
distinguish use of any tool to 'fix' an abnormality vs 'enhance' something
that is normal are idiots because the distinction is merely one of perspective
around whether something is 'broken' or not. Frankly the world would be a
whole lot better off if everyone had a IQ > 130 (functionally, since we would
renormalize).

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trhway
>That said people trying to distinguish use of any tool to 'fix' an
abnormality vs 'enhance' something that is normal are idiots because the
distinction is merely one of perspective around whether something is 'broken'
or not.

man, while i fully support speeding up the evolution through all the means
possible, your statement is kind of self-contradictory: you use "normal", and
thus implicitly you bring up the notion of some distribution with clear notion
of "normal", ie. some well distinguishable significant mass at the center and
thus the 'fix'/'enhance' difference becomes very well defined (not just merely
one of perspective) - 'fix' is moving up toward the mean/center mass while
'enhance' is moving up toward the mass's upper edge and away from it.

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hyperion2010
I will plead that I am using normal in the normative (and thus subjective)
fashion but even in a positive fashion you still have to pick the values you
choose to measure. You can't simply reduce a phenotype to a single dimension
of good/bad and try to push it back to the middle. See for example the giant
literature reflecting the many gains of function that accompany learning
disabilities. If I take my meds to fix only the 'bad' parts aren't I somehow
gaining a leg up because I have an advantage along another dimension? Probably
an even better example is bipolar disorder where the current 'fix' makes the
person catatonic, a clear loss since they are often highly productive during
mania. The reason I bring these up is because they are better edge cases than
something like cystic fibrosis (which is a better fit for your argument) where
there isn't really much debate (and doesn't fit with the article). Other
single gene causes of mental disability might also be a better fit for the
'pure normal' but what happens when we discover a 2 gene source of mental
disability? How about 10? How about 100? Where do you draw the line between
mental disability and just being stupid? If I feel sorry for zygotes that will
grow up to have average IQ because many of the most beautiful things in the
universe are beyond their grasp. Does the fact that they will be 'average'
mean their parents should be denied the ability to give them the gift of one
day having deep insight into the beauties of the universe? This is a
longwinded way of saying that I think part of this issues is because many
people in our society conflate 'normal' with 'best,' the result is that they
argue that it is ok bring someone back to the average but that somehow
anything beyond that is immoral. What kind of sick society doesn't want every
member to lead the most fulfilling, contributing, and meaningful life
possible? Sure there are plenty of arguments about certain treatments being
out of reach of the poor, but to bring things back to the original article:
have you seen the prices of private schools lately?

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lootsauce
Those that think there is anything new in transumanism should read the 20th
century arguments for eugenics, that is essentially what we're talking about
albeit with a shiny new techno-hipster coating. This is not speeding up
evolution, evolution encodes meaningful adaptations to an environment over
eons, not fashionable "enhancements" to a persons "IQ"(however that happens to
be measured) that may change from year to year. There is a holistic reality
that is so blindly and eagerly thrown off by dreaming of the wonders of a
brave post/transhuman future it makes one wonder at what point the post-
posthumanists will circle back around and want to recover their true humanity
unsullied by their forebears ham-handed tinkering. Good luck with all that,
personally I'll stick with my boring old unmodified plain humanness.

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klipt
You can't really prevent people from practicing eugenics though.

At the lowest level it manifests as dating preferences - everyone prefers to
breed with those they find mentally and physically attractive.

Direct genetic manipulation is just a stronger way of expressing those
preferences.

