from another thread here: 'superior' genetics creates superior opportunity in life?

[davmat787]

My dream is to be genetically engineered to physically attach to the genitalia of a gigantic swimming woman fish and constantly milked for sperm.

Sounds almost like the unfortunate life of the male Angler fish. You should check it out if you aren't familiar with it, very fascinating. The male basicaly becomes attached to the female and morphs into a pair of gonads for reproductive purposes. She can have many sets of male-turned-gonads grafted onto her. :hmm:😱D:

The females are also something like 10-20 times larger than the males.

The oatmeal even did a funny take on this: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/angler

 

[JohnOfSheffield]

Strength, longevity, intelligence etc are genetic traits. Not everyone can be an Olympian. If one could isolate the biological basis for these and could engineer people who have these qualities they would be viewed as superior. It would be hard to imagine that this and more wouldn't be possible.

I think you're making the mistake of confusing what we in this set environment at this time view as superior.

A fast metabolism and ability to accumulate muscle mass would be a bad thing in many types of environment.

To breed on traits like these alone removes the genetic diversity making the subjects less fit in the long run and thus they are inferior since the end game is producing viable offspring.

 

[OinkBoink]

I think you're making the mistake of confusing what we in this set environment at this time view as superior.

A fast metabolism and ability to accumulate muscle mass would be a bad thing in many types of environment.

To breed on traits like these alone removes the genetic diversity making the subjects less fit in the long run and thus they are inferior since the end game is producing viable offspring.

Well, can't we study what sort of an environment requires what sort of traits and modify them based on that? It's an incredibly complex endeavor/endeavour,but curiosity and necessity will lead us down that path.

 

[OinkBoink]

One interesting thing (interesting to me at least) that I've thought is that if we go back far enough, we all started off as a self-replicating molecule of some sort which was built from materials in the environment. In that sense, we really are just manifestations of the environment. Of course, we make the intrinsic and extrinsic distinction for practical reasons. I wonder where free will comes into all this. But that's an incredibly complex topic in itself.

Although it's kind of obvious, I still find it interesting that everything I eat tends to become a part of me and it builds my body. Again, in that sense, I'm a manifestation of the environment. The outside is turning into me.

 

[JohnOfSheffield]

Well, can't we study what sort of an environment requires what sort of traits and modify them based on that? It's an incredibly complex endeavor/endeavour,but curiosity and necessity will lead us down that path.

Sure we can but no matter what we select for we will remove diversity.

Nature has this figured out (figured out is a misnomer but nature by being the cruel bitch she is kills off those that are not fit) by diversifying the populace as it breeds, if we work in the opposite direction we'll end up with what is basically inbreeding and that WILL kill everyone eventually.

This is not to mention epigenetics which may play an even bigger role than actual genetics.

For example, say your grandmother got a substance into her system while she was pregnant and this substance interfered with your mothers development of her egg cells (all of a womans egg cells are made before week 17 of their fetal development), now her offspring will be different because of it. That is one environmental change that affects two generations in at least one way for the first generation and two ways for the second generation.

Environmental factors during fetal development, infancy, childhood and puberty GREATLY affect gene expression to a degree where two people with the same genetic makeup are completely different when it comes to intelligence, physical fitness and so on. Take a look at identical twins who are raised in different environments, they share the same DNA and they even shared the environment in the fetal development stages but they can be vastly different individuals.

 

[OinkBoink]

Sure we can but no matter what we select for we will remove diversity.

Nature has this figured out (figured out is a misnomer but nature by being the cruel bitch she is kills off those that are not fit) by diversifying the populace as it breeds, if we work in the opposite direction we'll end up with what is basically inbreeding and that WILL kill everyone eventually.

This is not to mention epigenetics which may play an even bigger role than actual genetics.

For example, say your grandmother got a substance into her system while she was pregnant and this substance interfered with your mothers development of her egg cells (all of a womans egg cells are made before week 17 of their fetal development), now her offspring will be different because of it. That is one environmental change that affects two generations in at least one way for the first generation and two ways for the second generation.

Environmental factors during fetal development, infancy, childhood and puberty GREATLY affect gene expression to a degree where two people with the same genetic makeup are completely different when it comes to intelligence, physical fitness and so on. Take a look at identical twins who are raised in different environments, they share the same DNA and they even shared the environment in the fetal development stages but they can be vastly different individuals.

My point is, can't we create as much diversity as we want to once we understand the biological and environmental factors that make individual traits arise? We can pretty much create what we want, right?

 

[JohnOfSheffield]

My point is, can't we create as much diversity as we want to once we understand the biological and environmental factors that make individual traits arise? We can pretty much create what we want, right?

Um, no, no we can't.

Diversity means that people are not bred for specific traits (whether it's by gene insertion or breeding to have the same traits) but rather that genes diversify by free selection.

Limit the selection and you have the same result as inbreeding.

It seems like a great idea but genetic manipulation would best be used to limit harmful mutations and nothing else.

Regarding the environmental factors, we are doing that (or rather, trying to do that) already by giving advice to pregnant women and parents as well as adapting society to create a better environment.

The combination of a good environment and removing harmful mutation is great, going further than that will have side effects that may be more harmful than any harmful mutation.

 

[OinkBoink]

Um, no, no we can't.

Diversity means that people are not bred for specific traits (whether it's by gene insertion or breeding to have the same traits) but rather that genes diversify by free selection.

Limit the selection and you have the same result as inbreeding.

It seems like a great idea but genetic manipulation would best be used to limit harmful mutations and nothing else.

Regarding the environmental factors, we are doing that (or rather, trying to do that) already by giving advice to pregnant women and parents as well as adapting society to create a better environment.

The combination of a good environment and removing harmful mutation is great, going further than that will have side effects that may be more harmful than any harmful mutation.

Well, I'm not really knowledgeable enough on the technical aspects of genetics, so you might as well teach me a thing or two.

That being said, it seems as though pretty much everything has "side effects". It's also about how we study these side effects and minimize the damage caused by them.

Don't we go against nature every time we care for a disabled person or when we give people corrective lenses to wear for poor eye sight? When a woman comes up and asks for her breast size to be increased, do we deny her that? Similarly, when people come up in the future and want better traits (even if it is with respect to the specific environment they're living in) for themselves and/or their children, do we deny them that? I mean there are many ways to look at it.

How do we define what a harmful mutation is? Low intelligence and physical fitness (with respect to the environment you're in) may as well be termed harmful because they reduce one's chance of survival among a host of others who have better qualities. Apart from something as fundamental as survival, people may also want "success" in life. They may want to be able to understand math(s) as well as someone else or be as beautiful as someone else (forget about the "someone else" part, they might just want it for themselves). It's hard for anyone to sit back and watch some others gain power, authority, wealth etc. and override their own opinions on decisions, policies etc. because of said authority. It's probably hard for a lot of people to see such a strong polarisation of wealth. And that might be true even after all the laws and legislations in the world. Laws are man made constructs that can be broken and manipulated. People would want something more concrete (kind of like the laws of science which are concrete). They would want power in their own hands, perhaps somewhat equally distributed in a sense.

The way things are today have their own problems associated with them and the way things might be will probably have their own problems associated with them. We'd probably have to go through all these problems to evolve "spiritually" if you know what I mean (read my previous posts, specifically the bit below).

Probably giving everyone good genes will cause problems of itself which will enable us to go to the next stage of intellectual and spiritual evolution. Maybe this in between stage is inevitable for the ideas of care, compassion etc. to sink into to people's minds and for them to realise/realize that more in life is out of our control than in our control and that we need to be grateful for what we have and be compassionate towards those who don't.

 

[Charles Kozierok]

Whether people like it or not, I think it's pretty hard to argue against the notion that better genes make life easier. Physical looks are helpful in most aspects of life, and natural talent makes it much more likely that you'll succeed at whatever you aim to do.

 

[Moonbeam]

Sounds almost like the unfortunate life of the male Angler fish. You should check it out if you aren't familiar with it, very fascinating. The male basicaly becomes attached to the female and morphs into a pair of gonads for reproductive purposes. She can have many sets of male-turned-gonads grafted onto her. :hmm:😱D:

The females are also something like 10-20 times larger than the males.

The oatmeal even did a funny take on this: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/angler

Fascinating enough to have come to the surface out of a lifetime of accumulated data when I read this thread. I can't begin to calculate how many years ago I read about that fish but the feel of the memory tells me I was quite young and very magnetized by an interest in sex.

 

[DrPizza]

Not necessarily "superior" opportunities, but more opportunities. All else being equal, the more attractive person is more likely to get the job, etc.

Higher intelligence will generally result in far more opportunities. Not all intelligent individuals capitalize on their intelligence in ways that make them wealthier. Less intelligent people have fewer opportunities. Want to be a doctor? lawyer? etc.? You'd better be intelligent.

 

[OinkBoink]

Not necessarily more opportunities either, but an ability to use the available opportunities to your advantage. Of course, maybe this is just playing with words.

 

[Moonbeam]

Whether people like it or not, I think it's pretty hard to argue against the notion that better genes make life easier. Physical looks are helpful in most aspects of life, and natural talent makes it much more likely that you'll succeed at whatever you aim to do.

But if one inquires into what better genes may mean one could be tempted to say those that make life easier which would make your case rather circular. Also physical beauty is average appearance which by your argument makes average better, a rather odd turn of events.

We know also from neuroscience that liberal and conservative brains are adaptive in different situations such that the presence of both types on minds has adaptive value for the species. The notion of genetic variability has adaptive value for a species if not for the individual because the environment is different from day to day and millennium to millennium so what are good genes one day may be bad the next. Nature is the arbiter of what is good genetically as measured by who survives to breed.

Clearly the superior people in the US right now, genetically the fittest, are Mexican peasants who will work their asses off and breed like rabbits. The so called superior people are lucky if they have one kid.

Evolution among humans right now is driven not by genes but by culture and culture is attitude, how you see the world. Thought is fear which confers a great advantage to folk who do not think. This is why we want to change ideas, how we see things, instead of improving our genes. That is the adaptive strategy that holds the possibility for success, in my opinion.

As I try to explain over and over, thought is comparison and comparison is duality, the creation of better and lesser genes, all ideas that have no reality outside of thinking, that the insight into this illusion is the ultimate revolution, the return of unity of consciousness in which there is no divisions, no better or worse, only the give of being completely who you are. To love oneself as one is via the collapse of duality thinking is to end separation, to experience the universe and ones self as the same thing. This is the state of mind that ends all emotional doubt and all emotional needs. To be or not to be that is the question.

 

[sandorski]

I essentially agree with the OP, at least at some point in history that became true. It may always have been true, but there are clearly people throughout history who possessed Superior Intellects(at least in the general sense) who have introduced ideas that changed the course of the future.

Whether they were "Genetically Superior" is very arguable though.

For the past few centuries the need for such a thing has dramatically diminished, IMO. Between our accumulated Knowledge and our methods of acquiring new Knowledge are such that even people of Average Intellect are able to contribute, sometimes in dramatic fashion.

 

[Sonikku]

I would agree. Genetics are diverse, not inferior or superior.

Yep, not inferior or superior at all. I just want the "diverse" kind of genes most conductive towards winning Olympic medals/stuffing my face full of food with little to no weight gain/winning world class RTS game competitions/making billions and/or writing my own ticket in life. Let someone else have the diverse set of genes not conductive towards any of these things for the sake of diversity.

 

[Charles Kozierok]

Ask any aspiring baseball pitcher stuck in the minor leagues because his fastball just isn't fast enough whether genes matter. Or the kid who worked his ass off to try to get into a top school but didn't quite get a high enough SAT score. Or the opera singer who studied for ten years but whose voice just isn't quite of the right caliber. Or the lumberjack who has to quit because his knees gave out in his 30s.

And so on.

Nobody is saying that "genetic excellence" is required for success, nor even that it doesn't come with its own potential problems. But it's simply unrealistic to claim that better genes don't provide significant advantages when it comes to opportunity.

 

[Moonbeam]

Yep, not inferior or superior at all. I just want the "diverse" kind of genes most conductive towards winning Olympic medals/stuffing my face full of food with little to no weight gain/winning world class RTS game competitions/making billions and/or writing my own ticket in life. Let someone else have the diverse set of genes not conductive towards any of these things for the sake of diversity.

See, not satisfied with who you are because of unconscious self hate. Me, I'm just plain tickled to death with being inferior. And thus it is, I'm way, way superior to you. You to your Olympics and billions, and me to the universe.

🙂

Oh what morsels these foods be. Attitude is everything.

I am reminded of the man who stumbled on a group of Sufis camping in the wilderness, wearing rags and covered with grime, addressing each other in magniloquent terms, Oh King of the Universe, have a bite of this morel and a taste of that haunch. Oh Master of knowledge, indulge me in a toast. Oh Sun of Suns, share with me a story of how you ascended to Heaven, and all of them completely unaware they are genetically inferior.

Unless you have met your true self, you will be filled with doubt and worry. But one peak behind the vale of love and you will be smitten forever. May your shadow never grow less.

 

[Charles Kozierok]

I think part of being satisfied with who I am includes not deluding myself into thinking that others are better than me in certain areas. (Actually, I'm sure someone is better than me in every area, though hopefully not all at once.)

 

[DaveSimmons]

Some genetic improvements would make sense for everyone if they can be done safely and cheaply enough - removing defects, improving health and lifespan.

Changing brain functions would need to be done much more carefully. What if you raise the average IQ by 20 points relative to now, but destroy some of the DNA for creativity in the process? More chartered accountants but no new Steve Jobs or Lennon/McCartney?

 

[OinkBoink]

I think part of being satisfied with who I am includes not deluding myself into thinking that others are better than me in certain areas. (Actually, I'm sure someone is better than me in every area, though hopefully not all at once.)

Precisely.

Though I'm not against it, the human race is far from imbibing the kind of philosophical thoughts that Moonbeam speaks of. When you're down in the dirt, philosophy can give you only so much comfort. In this world, at least as of now, pragmatism matters (though pragmatism should be influenced by philosophy).

 

[werepossum]

Sounds almost like the unfortunate life of the male Angler fish. You should check it out if you aren't familiar with it, very fascinating. The male basicaly becomes attached to the female and morphs into a pair of gonads for reproductive purposes.

I know some men like this.

She can have many sets of male-turned-gonads grafted onto her. :hmm:😱D:

I know some women like this.

The females are also something like 10-20 times larger than the males.

I know some couples like this.

The oatmeal even did a funny take on this: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/angler

😀

This is a subtle subject. On the one hand, superior genetics in the form of intelligence or athletic ability or whatever tend to make opportunities. On the other hand, socioeconomic ability controls opportunity for most of us. Al Gore's son has the intelligence and the athletic ability of a sea cucumber, but because of the success of Al Gore Sr. and Al Gore Jr. he'll have vastly more opportunities than almost anyone smarter and/or more athletic raised in the ghetto. There is some justice in this, as one of the strongest incentives to work very hard and succeed is the ability to offer more and better opportunities to one's progeny. There is also some injustice in this, as those who by quirk of fate are born into or raised in the ghetto start out with two strikes against them in the Game of Life. If I had to decide on the validity of the OP's question, I'd say that the opportunities offered by superior genetics are on balance inferior to those offered by socioeconomic status, being narrower and having an inherently higher bar to taking advantage. Getting into an MBA program is just immeasurably easier if you're George W. Bush, with a Congressman for a father, than if you must compete solely on your own merits. The issue is probably most blurry for athletics, but I'd bet that a middling skilled athlete at Grayson and Muffy's Preparatory School for the Criminally Rich has a much better shot of making the State U team than does a player of the same skill level at Inner City Warzone High.

 

[Moonbeam]

Some genetic improvements would make sense for everyone if they can be done safely and cheaply enough - removing defects, improving health and lifespan.

Changing brain functions would need to be done much more carefully. What if you raise the average IQ by 20 points relative to now, but destroy some of the DNA for creativity in the process? More chartered accountants but no new Steve Jobs or Lennon/McCartney?

Imagine the best time you ever had in your life, maybe some joy you had as a kid? In any peak experience there is no thought of longer life, higher IQ, or genetic defects. You were just there, no, fully alive? If you know the joy of being you have experienced perfection. If you're not as happy as a dog it isn't because you are lacking is superiority, is it? No, it's because you're busy with the morbidity of thought, comparing yourself to others with the deeply buried feeling that you didn't measure up. You can imagine yourself to be as rational as you want about adjusting to the reality imposed by duality, but it is still just an illusion. There is no better or worse when you do not compare. So the question is, is it possible not to compare.

 

[zinfamous]

First you need to define "superior genetics".

came in here to post this. glad I was beaten to it....but a bit saddened it took 21 posts. :\

I suppose 20 posters here do not have superior genetics.... :hmm:

 

[woolfe9998]

See, not satisfied with who you are because of unconscious self hate. Me, I'm just plain tickled to death with being inferior. And thus it is, I'm way, way superior to you. You to your Olympics and billions, and me to the universe.

🙂

Oh what morsels these foods be. Attitude is everything.

I am reminded of the man who stumbled on a group of Sufis camping in the wilderness, wearing rags and covered with grime, addressing each other in magniloquent terms, Oh King of the Universe, have a bite of this morel and a taste of that haunch. Oh Master of knowledge, indulge me in a toast. Oh Sun of Suns, share with me a story of how you ascended to Heaven, and all of them completely unaware they are genetically inferior.

Unless you have met your true self, you will be filled with doubt and worry. But one peak behind the vale of love and you will be smitten forever. May your shadow never grow less.

While your ideas are interesting, I don't find them practical in the real world. Human beings as sentient creatures want to achieve in part because we see it as bettering our plight. If human beings were the zen masters you described at the outset we'd all be living in the caves and quite content with it. Maybe that is fine in some broad philosophical sense but you're trying to combat the natural development of the sentient mind and in the end it won't work, not on a broad scale. I know you think we're born "pure" and we develop these insecurities over time but I posit that these are inevitable developments - that we will always compare ourselves to others, our circumstance to hypothetically or actually different circumstances which we consider more desirable than our own.

We could use some of what you're describing to curb some of or worst tendencies, but trying to suppress the basic human drive to achieve and improve and is robbing us of a sense of purpose - however illusory it may be - in an otherwise purposeless universe. A world full of budhists monks who have the ability to look at shit and see gold sounds great but it doesn't go anywhere. I don't see it as all that different from a "utopia" of people who do nothing but jack in to virtual reality "bliss" and could care less about the outside world. It sounds a lot more enlightened than that, but in the end I'm not sure it's all that different.

Everything we achieve, we achieve precisely because of the insecurities you decry. The key is in achieving some balance so that we don't destroy ourselves because of them.

 

[JohnOfSheffield]

Well, I'm not really knowledgeable enough on the technical aspects of genetics, so you might as well teach me a thing or two.

That being said, it seems as though pretty much everything has "side effects". It's also about how we study these side effects and minimize the damage caused by them.

If the side effect is less diversity then it's a dealbreaker. That would be like a drug that over generations would make humanity less fit.

You really should look up genetic diversity and why it's not only a good thing, it's the reason we exist.

Don't we go against nature every time we care for a disabled person or when we give people corrective lenses to wear for poor eye sight? When a woman comes up and asks for her breast size to be increased, do we deny her that? Similarly, when people come up in the future and want better traits (even if it is with respect to the specific environment they're living in) for themselves and/or their children, do we deny them that? I mean there are many ways to look at it.

This isn't relevant at all to the discussion so i'll leave it alone.

How do we define what a harmful mutation is?

Harmful mutations are the cause of genetic disorders, a harmful mutation will cause a medical condition.

For example, hereditary diseases would be examples of harmful mutations.