I guess I have this naive idea that on Less Wrong we can have friendly, thoughtful discussions of politics without getting divided in to tribes. Does this seem like an ideal worth aiming for?
It would, if it didn’t keep getting disproven.
That said, designer babies aren’t an issue that I would have thought to be more politically sensitive than average as transhumanist topics go—it’s a touchy subject in the mainstream, but not in a Blue/Green way, more in a “prone to generalization from fictional evidence” way. Learn something new every day, I guess.
It brings up memories of other movements, backed by influential scientists, that gained widespread political appeal. Specifically, eugenics. Long before the term was associated with the Nazis, there were sincere eugenics movements in the United States that sought to improve the gene pool. There were laws on the books that provided for forced sterilization of the “unfit”. It just so happened that the victims of these policies were poor and/or minorities.
Since then, there’s always been a segment of the mainstream predisposed to distrust any talk of “improving” the population through scientific means. Any discussion of that topic will thus raise the Blue/Green specter.
As I mentioned in the reply to parent, I don’t see tribal warfare here. We are not two faceless champions of the enemy tribes duking it out, we are just two individuals who disagree. Not every political disagreement must represent tribal affiliation.
And “designer babies” is not a particularly politically sensitive topic. However control of how babies get designed, especially through laws and regulations, certainly is.
Not fictional evidence, real world evidence of how powerful groups have sought to control, marginalize, destroy the agency of, and even eliminate marginal groups all across history including recent history.
It would, if it didn’t keep getting disproven.
That said, designer babies aren’t an issue that I would have thought to be more politically sensitive than average as transhumanist topics go—it’s a touchy subject in the mainstream, but not in a Blue/Green way, more in a “prone to generalization from fictional evidence” way. Learn something new every day, I guess.
It brings up memories of other movements, backed by influential scientists, that gained widespread political appeal. Specifically, eugenics. Long before the term was associated with the Nazis, there were sincere eugenics movements in the United States that sought to improve the gene pool. There were laws on the books that provided for forced sterilization of the “unfit”. It just so happened that the victims of these policies were poor and/or minorities.
Since then, there’s always been a segment of the mainstream predisposed to distrust any talk of “improving” the population through scientific means. Any discussion of that topic will thus raise the Blue/Green specter.
As I mentioned in the reply to parent, I don’t see tribal warfare here. We are not two faceless champions of the enemy tribes duking it out, we are just two individuals who disagree. Not every political disagreement must represent tribal affiliation.
Tribal warfare looks like this.
And “designer babies” is not a particularly politically sensitive topic. However control of how babies get designed, especially through laws and regulations, certainly is.
Not fictional evidence, real world evidence of how powerful groups have sought to control, marginalize, destroy the agency of, and even eliminate marginal groups all across history including recent history.
So, in other words, it is a Blue/Green issue. Well, I’ve been wrong before.