Ask Lemmy

What change would a person who thinks they're already perfect make?

Don't worry, they're absolutely stupid enough to practice CRISPR to the point where their kids are inbreeding within a generation because their CRISPR fixed genetics made them all too biologically similar to create effectively genetically diverse offspring.

Techno fuedalism is still fuedalism. So that means idiots all at the top.

Yes, we will end up with Eloi and Morlocs

This is the theme of the Divergent series.

I think we all end up like the Asgards from SG-1 without the ability to transfer our consciousness to a new body.

Extinct via hubris. Obviously this assumes we do something about runaway global heating.

Excerpt from the book Accelerando

Free Chromosome Foundation has already published a manifesto calling for the creation of an intellectual-property-free genome with improved replacements for all commonly defective exons.

If you would like to read more...

Accelerando is a great sci-fi novel from Charles Stross, touching upon the theme of technological singularity. It is available as a free ebook, under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License!

Thus, I can legally reproduce parts of it here. This is the collected chronology of the future, found throughout the book (minus spoilers):

https://prokonsul.blogspot.com/2008/12/accelerando.html?m=1

We need to make CRISPR as easy as 3D printing. Open source genetic modification.

Sure, we'll get lunatics making doomsday viruses in their basement, but also other lunatics designing vaccines for them you can make with your own desktop bioreactor.

More importantly, we'll also get people turning themselves into catgirls.

Screw cyberpunk; biopunk's where it's at.

When?

Why do you think so many use surrogates now?

They're 100% at least doing illegal selections, but I would be shocked if none of them are doing out right editing.

Future Man, anyone? This is Biotic shit.

If a dude in his garage could do it, it's not gonna be locked away. See: The Thought Emporium

I do wonder what traits the wealthy would tend to select for.

I don't think rich people want their kids bashing their brains in playing football. They want to watch the lower classes play in their gladiator battles for the wealthy's entertainment. So if selecting for physical attributes, I see it being more around aesthetics than athletics.

And they can select for intelligence, but they'd have to figure out how to not increase mental issues that correlate with intelligence. It's a pretty complicated relationship. And intelligence + education opportunities only gets so far without personality and random chance. Heck, I could point to some rich people who don't seem to value intelligence at all.

If I could select for one thing, I would select for a strong immune system. Make a solid physical foundation for a person to build on and make their life of their own decisions.

It’ll be even worse when they gene edit other people to be their slaves and/or personal armies.

That's a worry, but also there's still a lot of stuff we don't understand about genetics, and a bunch of grifters who'll fleece the super wealthy

Clicked the link to see how many references to Gattaca there would be. Was not disappointed

That's already happened. It happened a long time ago.

Don't worry. The poor will just become extinct like the other hominids that are no longer with us.

It shouldn't be anything too bad.

Once rich people gain any power or advantage they use it for themselves, often at the expense of others. Survival of the fittest. Another question is if they can effectively clone and gene edit themselves, will they have children with others at all or just make variants of themselves trying for perfection? If life extension technologies become viable, will they bother ,having kids or cloning themselves? These people are completely devoted to the satisfaction of their own egos, which controls them and they will redirect all resources toward their own interests. They are the absolute manifestation of selfishness and are the cautionary tale for why narcissism and egotism are a mental health disorder and not things we should let people run around with. Put them all in a psych ward.

We still don't know what all the Dna and RNA does. So the rich would just be testing with their own kids.

Yes