[goblin89]

> If nature is so great, why do I have -2 vision and bad teeth?

One could argue that your diet and lifestyle could've caused that, and it's hard to counter. (I have -4 vision, by the way.) I don't think medde's comment adds much to the discussion, but I can see the point about our inability to “understand nature”. We don't know what we don't know.

[guard-of-terra]

I know people of the same lifestyle who have good vision and/or perfect teeth. Sometimes clearly inherited.

I don't want to "understand nature", I don't want to change my lifestyle, I just want it to be fixed, next generation getting the good parts.

[goblin89]

Maybe ‘lifestyle’ isn't an appropriate word. I wanted to find an umbrella term for all the small stuff that may look irrelevant, but actually is not.

I remember a study not long ago that found sedentary lifestyle drastically affecting chances of death from cardiovascular disease. It does seem plausible to me that there could be many more things that affect us in more subtle and unexpected ways. Posture, thinking patterns—those little habits. Two apparently similar lifestyles may actually turn out to be very different when analyzed to such fine detail.

And since children from early age imitate their parents, it's natural to expect those things to get passed (with certain variance) from generation to generation.

Now the above is very unscientific, of course. I don't deny that genetics matter—just that there might be other things that matter as well.

Analogies from software engineering world are often flawed, but I'll draw one: a shallow fix of an annoying bug without full understanding of a complex system (and decent test coverage) leading to perplexing problems down the line—I think it's a familiar situation.

[medde]

I find it strange that there is many replies to a useless comment, can you help me understand?

[goblin89]

IMO despite some replies this thread isn't useful overall, and that's the problem.

Most of your short comment is good vs. bad judgement (nature is great, gene selection and cloning are evil). It provoked guard-of-terra's reply, which states the obvious—yes, nature isn't ‘great’ (neither is it ‘evil’, it simply is), and gene selection can be useful—wouldn't we all like to be able to ‘fix bugs’ in humans. I was compelled to reply to it for some reason, but regret that now.

FWIW, I didn't downvote or upvote your comment, and only now have noticed that it's greyed.

[VMG]

> One could argue that your diet and lifestyle could've caused that, and it's hard to counter.

I think he chose a benign example, but I'm sure everybody is aware of birth defects.

[guard-of-terra]

Those "benign examples" are life-long liability in money, happiness and increased risk. Thank you very much.