Morality

[demagogue]

There's the physiological side of anxiety that's doing a lot of the work, and I think what a gene like that might do is lower the threshold for when stressful situations cue those kinds of physiological responses. What your mother teaches you may have influence on how one deals with the responses, or prep yourself so it doesn't hit as hard maybe, but I don't know if it has much influence on cuing the responses themselves.

 

Therapeutic genetic modification is just the next step from medicinal responses to behavioral problems, and I think the same mixed bag of generally effective in some ways for some people, but also not a silver bullet and subject to all manner of side effects from mild to severe. I think we'd be prudent to make the most of it.

 

IMO the task is you want to give people as much peace & stability of mind to feel free to determine the course of their own lives without being sidetracked by things like inexplicable & severe anxiety or depression or whatever (that's abnormally triggered by genes in an unnatural way I mean). Anxiety & depression themselves generally still have a role in helping us shape who we are, so I wouldn't want them eliminated either though. But the task IMO is to let the actual decision-making parts of our minds have as much free room to make ourselves as possible, so the abnormal and 'mental illness' kinds could be usefully eased if they can be.

 

Edit: Regarding the whole Nietzschean "what doesn't kill me makes me stronger" thing, so deal with it... I think that assumes an overly romanticized vision of perfect human nature. I think in reality biology is more messy and humans have real limits, and some lines really can't be uncrossed. I respect the general point that you don't want to create a culture of victimology (Nietzsche used a phrase like "people of sand, coddled so they have rounded corners") and that's a legit risk. Life shouldn't be made easier for people necessarily; there should still be consequences for people's choices. But I think keeping people mentally healthy is separate from that; what I was trying to explain above. There's a difference between sadness you should suffer to make you a stronger person and mental illness that's just a barrier for you to make free decisions for yourself IMO.

[lowenz]

IMO the task is you want to give people as much peace & stability of mind to feel free to determine the course of their own lives without being sidetracked by things like inexplicable anxiety or depression or whatever. I think it still has a role in helping us shape who we are, so I wouldn't want them eliminated either though. But the task IMO is to let the actual decision-making parts of our minds have as much free room to make ourselves as possible.

This sounds more like paralyzing (hidden) fear than "simple" anxiety problem. And I totally agree with you.

Edited November 1, 2013 by lowenz

[demagogue]

Yeah, I was editing in clarifications saying just that in the time you posted.

But that's what I thought we were talking about. If a parent is going to such an extreme measure as modifying their kid's dna of all things, I'd think it should be for a rather serious issue that wouldn't let them have a normal life.

 

I don't think genetic modification is such a good thing for basic personality things still within the boundaries of "normal", like if a person is introverted or extroverted, or more or less anxious or foolhardy within reasonable limits... Messing with that could be getting into dodgy moral territory.

[Springheel]

Anxiety (social or not) can be created by extended coercive experiences too (and it remains after them), so this kind of vaccine is.....worthless IMHO.

 

Not sure what your point is. Because something can happen in two ways, there's no point in eliminating one of them?

 

I don't think genetic modification is such a good thing for basic personality things still within the boundaries of "normal", like if a person is introverted or extroverted, or more or less anxious or foolhardy within reasonable limits... Messing with that could be getting into dodgy moral territory.

 

That's sort of where I wanted to go...outside of the naturalistic fallacy, what are the reasons for NOT doing that?

[lowenz]

Not sure what your point is. Because something can happen in two ways, there's no point in eliminating one of them?

Avoid problem genesis is a good rational solution when possible or when there's no superior gain challenging the problem, but avoid them in that way ("vaccin" for social anxiety) is some kind of scary

Edited November 1, 2013 by lowenz

[demagogue]

That's sort of where I wanted to go...outside of the naturalistic fallacy, what are the reasons for NOT doing that?

 

Ok, that's a topic. So I take it there's more agreement for modification when we're talking about clearly ill effects. But what about basic personality, consumer shopping for non-critical things?

 

First, I could also be on board with "natural" not being a pre-defined thing. Just because your dna was randomly assigned to a certain configuration doesn't by itself make that configuration more privileged per se, without some argument anyway.

 

Why might it still be a bad idea? One thing is that it allows parents to biologically "disown" their child to an extent, in the sense their makeup isn't entirely defined by sexual reproduction but consumer selection, maybe to an extent there's not much difference between having a baby & adopting one as far as the connection between parent & child goes (That's an argument more against total genetic conversion, rather than a little modification, though.)

 

I feel like there's a slippery slope somewhere too. Doctors would have the financial incentive to be in the "superhuman" making business, and then you have parents with the incentive to push the limits. But when you read the literature on consumer selection, consumers don't always pick what's best for them in the long run (cf. fatty foods). I feel like that's a risk here too; nature responds to hidden variables in our best interest that consumers may miss.

 

Another issue is that, like with modified agriculture, it'd tend towards less genetic diversity, i.e., fewer and fewer genetic strains because "super" categories are getting over-represented (something like mono-culture). This actually might make the whole group more vulnerable (or less tolerant) to a single illness or environmental change that wipes out a whole community rather than just individuals.

 

There's also a justice angle. Modification would be mostly in the hands of rich parents. So then you might get rich communities stacking genetic odds in their favor, and poor families & communities being locked out of a path to privilege even more than before. How would they ever compete? If there is a movement for it, ideally it'd be part of a state plan so parents across the socio-economic spectrum could participate and it wouldn't be limited only to the rich.

 

None of these are quite essentialist arguments why it's necessarily bad though, as opposed to just has the potential for bad effects (that might be mitigated). I feel like there are essentialist arguments there too, but I'll have to think about it.

[lowenz]

nature responds to hidden variables in our best interest that consumers may miss.

Words of wisdom.

Tell them to the "market invisible hand" nuts

Edited November 3, 2013 by lowenz