it’s important to be honest about when fields are failing.
I agree, naturally. I criticize bioethicists as a group, precisely because they are, for the most part, AFAICT, failing to lead on moral questions around reprogenetics.
However, I think one has to make multiple updates. That observation indicates that bioethicists may not have the right abilities or motivations or other properties (determination, grit, courage, sanity, wisdom, what have you), and on those grounds could be dismissed as individuals or even as a group; but it also indicates that the problems themselves are especially difficult. The latter is often underappreciated. To avoid “HM bioethics” you actually have to cede power in the discussions, and even logistically doing that is difficult (I mean, I don’t know how to do it; I don’t have a near-fully-satisfying theory of how to give proper / coequal decision weight to all the stakeholders who should have that).
I think part of the HM mindset is precisely reacting to “a bunch of other people are doing it bad and kinda punishing me for trying to do it better” with “actually I should just be in charge and not worry about the concerns those people talk about” rather than “some other group of people would have to figure out how to do it better”.
I agree, naturally. I criticize bioethicists as a group, precisely because they are, for the most part, AFAICT, failing to lead on moral questions around reprogenetics.
However, I think one has to make multiple updates. That observation indicates that bioethicists may not have the right abilities or motivations or other properties (determination, grit, courage, sanity, wisdom, what have you), and on those grounds could be dismissed as individuals or even as a group; but it also indicates that the problems themselves are especially difficult. The latter is often underappreciated. To avoid “HM bioethics” you actually have to cede power in the discussions, and even logistically doing that is difficult (I mean, I don’t know how to do it; I don’t have a near-fully-satisfying theory of how to give proper / coequal decision weight to all the stakeholders who should have that).
I think part of the HM mindset is precisely reacting to “a bunch of other people are doing it bad and kinda punishing me for trying to do it better” with “actually I should just be in charge and not worry about the concerns those people talk about” rather than “some other group of people would have to figure out how to do it better”.