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by enraged_camel 3069 days ago
>>Evolution has been pretty effective to this point

Survivorship bias, pure and simple. In terms of evolutionary timescales, the success of humans is an anomaly, if not an outright accident. The overwhelming majority of all species that have ever existed has gone extinct.

Gene editing has the potential to not leave things up to chance, moving forward.
1 comments
xr4ti 3069 days ago
Not leave things up to chance?! Is the universe not inherently probabilistic? I'm guessing you mean make things a little more deterministic than they are now in terms of human evolution? Maybe, but I think its important to ask whether or not we already exist in some sort of thermodynamic equilibrium with the rest of the universe (on an evolutionary spacetime scale).

I also think it's not totally accurate to say that most species have gone extinct vs have evolved into something else.

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landryraccoon 3069 days ago
It's equally risky not to do it.

Human genetic engineering is a completely new technology. It could be massively disruptive or a dud. But if it is disruptive, then people who are conservative and late to get on board will be left behind.

If you're risk adverse, that's probably why it concerns you. Are you afraid it works, or afraid it doesn't?

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Retra 3069 days ago
It is usually better to be the inventor of a new weapon than to sit back and let all your enemies do it instead.
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ben_w 3069 days ago
When testing a new weapon, it is important to make sure it doesn’t explode in your face.

I’m not too worried about genetically modified humans, but I think there is a risk someone will make a synthetic “perfect plague” combining high transmission before it’s symptomatic with high lethality — think “breath transmitted HIV”.

1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_virology

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