Options are great, as long as you can predict the long-term group-consequences of your individual preferences. We didn’t get a certain distribution of traits by accident, it is part of an evolutionairy proven model of distributing properties among people so that on average, we’ll be making progress. So, if we tweak the distribution of traits, we might end up in a not easily reversed suboptimal situation. A society with all leaders or all scientists would be likely pretty horrible. For practical reason, most people need to be followers. You need a reserve of psychopaths for when shit hits the fan (societally speaking).
Also, I don’t think you can eliminate suffering in general, you can only shift the boundaries of what’s considering suffering.
Options are great, as long as you can predict the long-term group-consequences of your individual preferences.
We don’t apply this standard to other technologies or other sectors of life such as public policy, state structure, social norms, language, institutions, diet, etc. What seems to work are things like:
Empowering individuals, e.g. with more health, longevity, capacity to pursue things.
Setting up structures that create liberal containers in which free thinking and agency can grow many strands of progress.
These don’t involve directly predicting long term group consequences, because that’s infeasible. Instead you heal what’s in front of you.
We didn’t get a certain distribution of traits by accident, it is part of an evolutionairy proven model of distributing properties among people so that on average, we’ll be making progress.
It sounds like you think there’s something especially good or ideal about the default evolutionary pressures. Is that right? If so, why do you think so? It seems fairly unlikely. I mean, there’s clearly something kinda good about them, in that e.g. they tend toward empowering people at least somewhat, and on some very long timescale we’d expect some degree of niche-filling. But there could just as well be poor incentives. Human-evolution, like all species-evolutions, just greedily picks allele-frequency-increasing alleles given the current environment and gene pool; no strong reason for that to be aligned with our humane values.
So, if we tweak the distribution of traits, we might end up in a not easily reversed suboptimal situation.
I think this is possible in theory, and we should avoid this (e.g. with strong norms against such genomic choices, and maybe international treaties about it). I think it’s quite unlikely because (1) we don’t know much about genetics of personality (2) even if we did, personality is probably quite variable anyway, and (3) there will be a huge spread of who uses reprogenetics at all and what genomic choices parents will make, both in a given year and also as time goes on, and (4) the gene pool has a huge reservoir of variance and (5) what you do with reprogenetics can usually be reversed to a significant extent and (6) we can get multigenerational feedback. This adds up to “effects on mean traits of populations are quite weak for a long time, except for increasing some tails (and, possibly, with very large uptake of basic reprogenetics (e.g. embryo screening), decreasing some downside tails (e.g. severe monogenic diseases))”.
A society with all leaders or all scientists would be likely pretty horrible.
Eh, IDK about horrible. Seems not ideal, sure. Scientists can lead and leaders can science.
For practical reason, most people need to be followers. You need a reserve of psychopaths for when shit hits the fan (societally speaking).
I’m not convinced, why do you think this (compared to hypothetical alternatives, such as figuring out good healthy sane humane competent leadership)?
Also, I don’t think you can eliminate suffering in general, you can only shift the boundaries of what’s considering suffering.
That’s all well and good, but I think quite a lot of people, myself included, would rather set up future children for the kind of suffering involved in not knowing which groundbreaking intellectual or artistic effort to invest in, rather than the kind of suffering involved in cystic fibrosis and Alzheimer’s.
Options are great, as long as you can predict the long-term group-consequences of your individual preferences. We didn’t get a certain distribution of traits by accident, it is part of an evolutionairy proven model of distributing properties among people so that on average, we’ll be making progress. So, if we tweak the distribution of traits, we might end up in a not easily reversed suboptimal situation. A society with all leaders or all scientists would be likely pretty horrible. For practical reason, most people need to be followers. You need a reserve of psychopaths for when shit hits the fan (societally speaking).
Also, I don’t think you can eliminate suffering in general, you can only shift the boundaries of what’s considering suffering.
We don’t apply this standard to other technologies or other sectors of life such as public policy, state structure, social norms, language, institutions, diet, etc. What seems to work are things like:
Empowering individuals, e.g. with more health, longevity, capacity to pursue things.
Setting up structures that create liberal containers in which free thinking and agency can grow many strands of progress.
These don’t involve directly predicting long term group consequences, because that’s infeasible. Instead you heal what’s in front of you.
It sounds like you think there’s something especially good or ideal about the default evolutionary pressures. Is that right? If so, why do you think so? It seems fairly unlikely. I mean, there’s clearly something kinda good about them, in that e.g. they tend toward empowering people at least somewhat, and on some very long timescale we’d expect some degree of niche-filling. But there could just as well be poor incentives. Human-evolution, like all species-evolutions, just greedily picks allele-frequency-increasing alleles given the current environment and gene pool; no strong reason for that to be aligned with our humane values.
I think this is possible in theory, and we should avoid this (e.g. with strong norms against such genomic choices, and maybe international treaties about it). I think it’s quite unlikely because (1) we don’t know much about genetics of personality (2) even if we did, personality is probably quite variable anyway, and (3) there will be a huge spread of who uses reprogenetics at all and what genomic choices parents will make, both in a given year and also as time goes on, and (4) the gene pool has a huge reservoir of variance and (5) what you do with reprogenetics can usually be reversed to a significant extent and (6) we can get multigenerational feedback. This adds up to “effects on mean traits of populations are quite weak for a long time, except for increasing some tails (and, possibly, with very large uptake of basic reprogenetics (e.g. embryo screening), decreasing some downside tails (e.g. severe monogenic diseases))”.
Eh, IDK about horrible. Seems not ideal, sure. Scientists can lead and leaders can science.
I’m not convinced, why do you think this (compared to hypothetical alternatives, such as figuring out good healthy sane humane competent leadership)?
That’s all well and good, but I think quite a lot of people, myself included, would rather set up future children for the kind of suffering involved in not knowing which groundbreaking intellectual or artistic effort to invest in, rather than the kind of suffering involved in cystic fibrosis and Alzheimer’s.