[xvector]

> People aren’t allowed to mutilate babies what the hell are you going on about?

Circumcision is absolutely mutilation.

> Genetic tampering can lead to all kinds of unknowable nightmares.

You can "tamper with your kid's DNA" just by having kids with the wrong person and passing down a genetic disease.

There are plenty of unknowable things about life. You could die in a car crash. You certainly will die eventually.

Should we avoid taking risks entirely because they might result in bad outcomes? With this mindset, humanity would have never progressed. We would have never left our caves if we were paralyzed by our own fear.

Humanity is still early stage. We are not so different from those that once ventured out of their caves. To them, we owe everything. It is a disservice to all future humans that will ever live if we stop taking trajectory-changing bets because things could go wrong.

[portaouflop]

I agree on circumcision but you made it out that all kinds of mutilation are perfectly acceptable. But that one should definitely be banned, idk why (no -Jewish) Americans are so obsessed with it.

> There are plenty of unknowable things about life.

I agree but I know that I’m going to die someday.

As for where genetic engineering can lead I recommend the book “All Tomorrows”.

In any case i broadly agree with you - however there should still be guardrails and until we can safely and reliably manipulate the genetics of “less complex” animals we shouldn’t experiment with humans.

However you can probably do it if you really want! There are lots of countries that have less guardrails in place - but I would assume you don’t want to take the risk when it’s comes to your own life/offspring or am I wrong?

Take some trajectory-changing bets yourself and then I’ll believe that what you are saying is not just posturing

[xvector]

> I would assume you don’t want to take the risk when it’s comes to your own life/offspring or am I wrong?

I would, but that's mainly because of congenital psychosis that runs in my partner's family. Would gladly take the chance at editing that out of any embryo if there were targeted therapies.

If you know of any, please let me know - my understanding is that psychosis has not been isolated as well as Down's and blindness has, so you cannot genetically screen an embryo for it.

[portaouflop]

Incidentally there is another thread where just this is being discussed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45867125

Not sure if it can help in your case but definitely interesting.