[swatcoder]

Among them, eventually, will be modern medicine if we manage to preserve it long enough and share it widely enough.

By suppressing the consequence of genetic predispositions and vulnerabilities, it lets those genes propagate more freely and invisibly than they would have been doing before. It helps individuals and communities today in a way we can't possibly refuse, but sets up the species to become perpetually dependent on an elaborate, brittle medical infrastructure. Genetic engineering and eugenics could eventually address that, but those invite scifi horrors of their own. We seem to have set ourselves into a bit of a trap.

[gruez]

>but sets up the species to become perpetually dependent on an elaborate, brittle medical infrastructure

How is this any different than the transition from hunter-gatherers to agriculture caused us to "become perpetually dependent on an elaborate, brittle agricultural infrastructure"?

[swatcoder]

Only in scale and intensity.

Agriculture took hold in numerous civilizations and indeed introduced one of the primary threats of collapse for those civilizations. Throughout history, we can see civilizations collapse when their dependence on agriculture faltered, which happened often enough.

But neither the technology (agriculture) nor its failures (blight, famine, etc) were universal and so it hadn't become a threat to the species as a whole.

Modernity, however, has become aggressively global and more successfully universalizing. We not only invite every community into it, we insist they do so for their own good. Further, its technological contrivances (and therefore their brittleness) are more intense because of industrialization and later accelerating technology. As it continues to progress and expand, it brings the whole species into its gamble and raises the stakes of that gamble at the same time.

[fallingknife]

Ths "scifi horrors" of genetic engineering are entirely made up. Those things just aren't profitable, so they won't get done.

[wizzwizz4]

Most wars cost more than the expected return-on-investment. Some people value horrors over money.

[digging]

I don't think you've interpreted that quite right. Modern wars aren't funded by the bank accounts of the people profiting from them. War is a wealth transfer to the top.