[yitianjian]

Not OP, but something just feels unnatural and unsettling about changing humans, and especially for changing yourself. It feels like the uncanny valley where it just doesn't feel right. I'm agnostic so it's not for a particularly religious reasons, and it's purely an emotional response for me that's not grounded in logic at all, so I also just describe it as squeamish for no reason.

[BurningFrog]

When I have these thoughts, I remind myself that typhoid is natural and penicillin is artificial.

A big part of progress is fighting and defeating the natural.

That said, not all genetic manipulation will end well.

[sinenomine]

Thank you for a honest response. I think this is an underexplored topic - how many of our broad social policies were shaped mostly on the basis of sufficiently broadly shared visceral feeling.

Should we base ultimately coercive society-wide regulatory framework on mere "squeamishness", appropriately rationalized, or should we instead embrace a non-discriminatory, laissez-faire approach in this domain?

[quesera]

> how many of our broad social policies were shaped mostly on the basis of sufficiently broadly shared visceral feeling

All of them? I'm struggling to think of a counterexample.

[vcxy]

Yeah, I'd say the phrases "broadly shared visceral feelings" and "broad social policies" point to nearly the same concept.