>> ^chilaxe:

@NetRunner: "to try to make sure all men are still being created equally."
"Still?" Don't you mean 'for the first time since the start of civilization?'
"All men are created equal" means equality under the law, not that humans are even remotely equal in abilities and cognitive complexity.

Good points, but I was more making an allusion to the Declaration than actually meaning to invoke the original. All I meant was that our position will likely be one of trying to keep the income disparity between the different classes from turning the rich and poor into effectively different species.

Right now, genetics makes a difference, but the range of human ability is pretty narrow compared to what will be possible with genetic engineering.

>> ^chilaxe:
Re: reprogenetics:
It's essentially the same as the term 'genetic engineering,' which liberal circles talk about frequently, generally being highly opposed to human genetic engineering and anything else "unnatural."
I'm more than a little plugged into what liberal circles talk about, and fears of human genetic engineering really never comes up. If it does, it's usually in the context of bashing right-wing fundamentalists who want to ban stem cell research.

Genemod food comes up a lot, but most of that is driven by deep mistrust of corporations doing things to boost profit without concern for long term public health risks, coupled with the whole natural/organic/pure/clean food thing so many liberals are in to.

I suppose the other big topic is the idea of companies being able to patent genetic codes. Liberals don't like that, but it's usually focused on corporations overstepping their bounds (e.g. patenting the DNA of people without their consent) than some general desire to prevent corporations from being able to patent genetic intellectual property they legitimately develop.

>> ^chilaxe:
Re: "You may need to elaborate on the "liberals oppose genetics" comment -- we like research into genetics"
Liberalism in the 1970s-1990s used to argue IQ etc. had "no genetic basis --not that IQ means anything."

[snip]

However, it's still very common to see liberals claiming human behavioral genetics, evolutionary psychology, or human intelligence research are meaningless or simply have too high a "yuck factor" to allow for open discussion. That's particularly true if you're dealing with the more interesting areas, which are taboo for liberals:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/03/science/03gene.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/07/science/07indu.html


I can't speak for all liberals on this one, but I don't see those kinds of subjects as being taboo. I guess what I do think is taboo is for someone to use studies like that to turn around and make the case that society should become less egalitarian because of it.

@NetRunner: "to try to make sure all men are still being created equally."

"Still?" Don't you mean 'for the first time since the start of civilization?'

"All men are created equal" means equality under the law, not that humans are even remotely equal in abilities and cognitive complexity.


Re: reprogenetics:
It's essentially the same as the term 'genetic engineering,' which liberal circles talk about frequently, generally being highly opposed to human genetic engineering and anything else "unnatural."


Re: "You may need to elaborate on the "liberals oppose genetics" comment -- we like research into genetics"

Liberalism in the 1970s-1990s used to argue IQ etc. had "no genetic basis --not that IQ means anything." Now the anti- human sciences marxist academics who led liberal thought, like Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin, are too old or have passed away, so the liberal position seems to have migrated from 0%-5% genetic basis to 50% genetic basis, which is the number I noticed liberal Malcolm Gladwell gave in Outliers. The most recent American Psychological Association consensus statement that I'm aware of gives the number at 75%, so Gladwell's still probably being a little hopeful, but 50% is accurate enough.

However, it's still very common to see liberals claiming human behavioral genetics, evolutionary psychology, or human intelligence research are meaningless or simply have too high a "yuck factor" to allow for open discussion. That's particularly true if you're dealing with the more interesting areas, which are taboo for liberals:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/03/science/03gene.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/07/science/07indu.html

>> ^chilaxe:

Let's speculate... would I be a progressive if I was raised in your family, and would you be a capital-generating scientific rationalist if you were raised in my family? We can actually answer that, because my parents and siblings were in fact liberal, and my instincts were aligned against their instincts since my earliest memories. That's to my benefit, since my instincts are orders of magnitude more useful in the world than their instincts, but that's not really just.

I could just as easily hold that situation up as proof that it's not genetic, either. Of course, the right answer to that is that both genetics and learned behaviors are more complex than "traits in the parent appear in the children".

>> ^chilaxe:
Liberals oppose genetics because it's immutable, and they oppose reprogenetics because it has to do with genetics, which they oppose. Fast forward to the 2030s and liberalism has done a 180 after opposing genetics for 100 years, because they've realized advancing everybody's biology is the only way to create genuine human equality instead of pretend human equality.
That's great news. It means we have a choice.


You may need to elaborate on the "liberals oppose genetics" comment -- we like research into genetics, and I haven't really heard any serious discussion of reprogenetics in liberal circles.

Human genetic engineering is gonna be a big political shitstorm. My own prediction is that liberals are going to come down on the stance that all US citizens should be provided subsidized reprogentic services, to try to make sure all men are still being created equally. I fully expect conservatives to have their usual coalition -- the free marketeers will object to having an advantage of wealth lessened by "socialism", and the theocons will want it banned outright (but will never quite succeed in getting it, just like bans on abortion or contraception).

>> ^entr0py:

>> ^Sketch:
Finally, intelligent design is actually a legitimate scientific fact! But WE are the intelligence. We created life, like we created God.

Except they didn't actually design anything, it's 100% a copy of an existing bacteria's genome. I don't really get the important distinction between this and conventional genetic engineering. Either way your starting point is the genome of an existing cell, which you proceed to fuck with.


My god man, do you have any idea how technically complicated the genome is? We took the simplest bacteria and it still took 15 YEARS (and a millions of dollars) with current technology. This process just proves that we have the capability to build a genome from scratch (whether it's designed to a template of a previous genome or to one devised by us). I think the fact that we have accomplished this much is absolutely incredible and opens doors in our future to lead to the vaccines and cures of diseases we never even thought possible.

>> ^Sketch:

Finally, intelligent design is actually a legitimate scientific fact! But WE are the intelligence. We created life, like we created God.


Except they didn't actually design anything, it's 100% a copy of an existing bacteria's genome. I don't really get the important distinction between this and conventional genetic engineering. Either way your starting point is the genome of an existing cell, which you proceed to fuck with.

There is nothing wrong with genetic engineering - to say otherwise is ignorant. Monsanto may be a shit company with megalomanic intentions but do not confuse that with the science of bio-engeneering. It's the future.

What the guy says sounds reasonable but I think nowadays people would take issue with some parts of his message. Namely the LCHF crowd who so far eat lots of meat and rich sauces and are very healthy (again, so far).

Corporatism != Capitalism

Also, Human nature is the cause of stupid. No matter how you look at it half of society will always be stupid (bell curve)...until we genetically engineer ourselves into perfect clones, that is.

It's actually pointless to introduce the solar energy input into the equation at all Crake. The sun has shone and will shine for far longer than human beings will ever manage to survive on this planet. When I and many others look at agricultural reform we look at those aspects of the food production chain that humans can control and can change. The 'facilitation' you talk about is the entire crux of the modern day agricultural dilemma. There are an infinite number of ways that facilitation could happen, and the concern and debate is whether or not the road industry has chosen for us is the one that will bare the most fruit. Clearly it has not. The reasons, myriad, I don't want to write a thesis on the sift.

And I agree, when you start looking at government crop subsidies the energy calculation does lose its relevance. Why? Because you have jumped a 100 steps up a chain that was problematic at its root. The agricultural subsidy issue is a whole other Pandora's box.

Again, it's not the Haber process itself that is unsustainable, it is the entire industrial agricultural framework. The Haber process's dependence on natural gas is problematic, and even with future technological developments aside, it's a reductionist solution that undermines the multitude of complimentary farming techniques that could naturally introduce nitrogen into the soil. It's the kind of simplified agricultural solution that corporate agribusiness monopolies love, and it's this mutual reinforcement that causes concern. Again, the Haber process is a small piece of huge puzzle, we digress.

And with regards to future developments, let me illustrate why future developments are almost irrelevant to many of the problems at hand. In India for example there is a 500 year old tradition of aquaculture, for shrimp specifically. Most of the farms are small, local and sustainably run using various aquaculture farming methods (if you are interested you could read up on the Bheri system of aquaculture, just one of the many traditional systems).

This 'third world' farming technique as some might call it is just as profitable and has yields just as large as the more intensive commercial and industrial aquaculture methods. It has stood the test of time and it also forms the back bone of India's shrimp export economy, the largest in the world.

Industrial shrimp farming has had dismal success around the world. Taiwan, China, Mexico, Ecuador, all these countries have had huge issues keeping commercial shrimp farming sustainable. Wherever commercial shrimp farming has been tried, it has failed to a large degree, usually due to major disease outbreaks. That's why the call it the 'rape and run' industry.

Isn't it strange that the more industrial shrimp farms are introduced in India (due to government subsidies and incentives), the more 'environmental issues' they have to deal with that just didn't exist with the 'traditional third world systems' . . . mangrove destruction, drinking water pollution (from antibiotics and pesticides add to the shrimp ponds to minimize disease) , salinization of groundwater, etc.

Now you might argue with me that the solution to this problem potentially lies with future developments . . . a better antibiotic maybe, perhaps genetically engineering shrimp to be more resistant to disease and pollution, etc, or maybe the solution lies in adopting farming techniques that have been slowly perfected for the last 500 years and are proven to work, where the only interventions that could be made were natural ones and success was determined by how well you could maintain a balanced relationship with your local ecosystem. It is these farming systems and the mindset that they embody that I would like to see the world adopt, improve upon and gravitate towards.

Pinning your hopes for improvement on future developments and technology is totally misguided, especially when the core of the modern industrial agricultural foundation is so rotten. I have nothing against technology, but I'm not going to let the problems, born of brutish and unsophisticated industrial thinking, be overlooked by a corporate apologist futurist mindset. I'm not implying that's how you feel about the issue, but that the stance that many people have. There is an utter lack of holistic thinking in the industrial agricultural world (and everywhere else pretty much) and the direction it is leading us in is potentially frightening.

Turns out people in the US won't see this movie...

"Good God, what is this country coming to?

It seems the film Creation, a major-production biopic about Charles Darwin starring Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly, won't be seen in the United States because no distributor with the guts to stand up to the religious right in this country can be found:
The film was chosen to open the Toronto Film Festival and has its British premiere on Sunday. More..It has been sold in almost every territory around the world, from Australia to Scandinavia.
However, US distributors have resolutely passed on a film which will prove hugely divisive in a country where, according to a Gallup poll conducted in February, only 39 per cent of Americans believe in the theory of evolution.
Movieguide.org, an influential site which reviews films from a Christian perspective, described Darwin as the father of eugenics and denounced him as "a racist, a bigot and an 1800s naturalist whose legacy is mass murder". His "half-baked theory" directly influenced Adolf Hitler and led to "atrocities, crimes against humanity, cloning and genetic engineering", the site stated.
The film has sparked fierce debate on US Christian websites, with a typical comment dismissing evolution as "a silly theory with a serious lack of evidence to support it despite over a century of trying".
Jeremy Thomas, the Oscar-winning producer of Creation, said he was astonished that such attitudes exist 150 years after On The Origin of Species was published.
"That's what we're up against. In 2009. It's amazing," he said.
"The film has no distributor in America. It has got a deal everywhere else in the world but in the US, and it's because of what the film is about. People have been saying this is the best film they've seen all year, yet nobody in the US has picked it up.
"It is unbelievable to us that this is still a really hot potato in America. There's still a great belief that He made the world in six days. It's quite difficult for we in the UK to imagine religion in America. We live in a country which is no longer so religious. But in the US, outside of New York and LA, religion rules.
"Charles Darwin is, I suppose, the hero of the film. But we tried to make the film in a very even-handed way. Darwin wasn't saying 'kill all religion', he never said such a thing, but he is a totem for people."
No wonder conservatives believe liberals lack the courage of their convictions. We prove them right every other day"
- http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=6fe_1253048366

Is this a side effect of genetic engineering?

At least we're not at risk of having to welcome our French Bull-Turtle overlords.

>> ^peggedbea
the point thats being missed is that its a gigantic industry, linked to every other imaginable gigantic industry. it must support a massive infrastructure, education, salaries and insurance and liability costs of millions and millions of people. who do deserve to get paid. it is subject to all the other whims and manipulations of markets, inflations, corruption, bad management, human error and bad politicking. etc etc etc.

Do you know how many different people, from how many backgrounds, working with how many billions of dollars of equipment it takes to construct a computer which performs 3,000,000,000 operations a second? The computer industry is much larger and more complex than the healthcare system.

not only that, it is intimately entangled into every single persons life. from the joys of birth to the tragedy of death and everywhere in between. it is subject to bad decisions, catastrophic accidents, ignorance and arrogance of every single person.

As opposed to say, the civil engineers who built the Golden Gate bridge, of which millions of cars travel across (safely) every day? Or the Boeing 757s built by aerospace engineers, which take billions of people around the world to never-before-seen destinations safely, and at 500 miles per hour?

its huge. too big. and too important. and there is no solution. but the path we are currently on is completely unacceptable and unsustainable. and its time try something else.

As opposed to the genetic engineers who splice genes to create hybrid plants resistant to disease, or the agricultural engineers who develop the technologies to provide millions of tons of food each year to feed the 300,000,000 Americans in this country? That big or that important?

but an engineer will never have to cut a premature infant out of a dying mothers womb in a hallway while the father watches in horror. an engineer will never have to ask a mother to sign the paperwork so her sons organs can be harvested. and an engineer will never get beaten up by scared, mentally retarded man twice his size while trying to provide care.

What do you think an aerospace engineer things each time one of their plane crashes? Or a civil engineer thinks when the buildings they designed fell on 9/11? Or the chemical engineer when the drug they designed accidentally kills a thousand people?

Your argument is absolutely vacuous.

There are two reasons why healthcare has been a complete failure not only in the US but worldwide:
1. Healthcare is too intertwined with politics
2. Healthcare providers are not as smart as you think.

>> ^notarobot:
I appreciate Brand's appeal for rational global-problem solving as well as his research and his organization of information, but I share almost none of his enthusiasm for the topics he discussed.
Genetic engineering presumes that humans, in our 50-70 year life span know better than nature. Nature has been at the game of shaping genes, of us and every living thing on the Earth, for a long time. Once a gene has been modified it can stay way for eternity. There is no undo. It is arrogant for any human to believe that even the knowledge of how to meddle with genes should be the same as carrying the wisdom to wield that knowledge without error.

If you think something shouldn't be done, because nature knows best, you could carry that same argument to all aspects of our technology, and I doubt you want us to live in pre-stoneage time again. I don't see how nature knows anything, or cares about anything. Nature just functions through mutation and selection. At any time an invasive or disruptive species could evolve. The only safeguard on nature is that evolution moves quite slow.
We have been genetically modifying animals since the first wolf was domesticated. Just look at what kind of freaky dogs we have created since. Or highly productive farm animals that couldn't function in the wild, a dairy cow for example. Now we have the ability to speed up and improve this process. And granted, there is a difference, because now we can move genes into an organism that never were there before, like jellyfish genes in a mammal.
Most if not all species that we engineer have no competitive advantage in nature and will only thrive in our carefully managed farmlands. For potentially more dangerous applications, we need to take adequate precautions and thoroughly test species or build in kill genes that we could trigger. Or just make them infertile.

Though it is true that warheads can be dismantled (with significant effort) for use in nuclear power stations, the fact that the bi-product of fission reactors is weapons-grade material remains lost on most people.

This fact is not lost on many engineers. Many modern reactor designs cannot make weapons grade materials. The reason that many old nuclear plants can do this is because they were specifically designed to make the bomb material and produce energy in the process.
Weapons grade material can also be made without reactors by extracting the fissile component of natural uranium.

Geo engineering is the product of similar arrogance of as genetic engineering. It is fueled by a desire for a static environment. The fact is that the Earth has never stood still, and will never do so (except for that one time in film..).

Of course the Earth doesn't care what we do, it and life will go on no matter what we do, even after a full out nuclear war. The point could be made that we have been geoengineering for a long time now. Just look at our cities, farmland and pollution. The only problem is that some of our geoengineering is potentially harmful to us and nature. Therefore deliberate geoengineering is proposed to mitigate these problems. From a humanitarian view one would want to mitigate these problems to relieve human suffering, just like we try to eradicate horrible diseases.

>> ^cybrbeast:
I couldn't agree more with this guy. He even talked about the evils of Greenpeace trying to stop Africa from using biotech. But that's only half of it, they are also against artificial fertilizer and pesticides. Probably responsible for the deaths of millions of Africans.
We need more rational environmentalists!


I appreciate Brand's appeal for rational global-problem solving as well as his research and his organization of information, but I share almost none of his enthusiasm for the topics he discussed.

Genetic engineering presumes that humans, in our 50-70 year life span know better than nature. Nature has been at the game of shaping genes, of us and every living thing on the Earth, for a long time. Once a gene has been modified it can stay way for eternity. There is no undo. It is arrogant for any human to believe that even the knowledge of how to meddle with genes should be the same as carrying the wisdom to wield that knowledge without error.

Though it is true that warheads can be dismantled (with significant effort) for use in nuclear power stations, the fact that the bi-product of fission reactors is weapons-grade material remains lost on most people.

Geo engineering is the product of similar arrogance of as genetic engineering. It is fueled by a desire for a static environment. The fact is that the Earth has never stood still, and will never do so (except for that one time in film..).

Is this man *begging for more genetic engineering?

>> ^gtjwkq:
^ Let consumers and consumer groups who care about the environment boycott industries that harm it. Let private companies that check and endorse industries that respect the environment inform the consumers. Let environmental friendliness become a competitive advantage when the environment becomes a concern. Let news organizations and environment activists denounce industries that harm the environment. Let courts punish those who harm the property of others. The list goes on...

Perfect plan. Why then did slavery go on for thousands of years? Certainly there would have been high-minded people who would've boycotted slave-produced goods, right? That would've led directly to slavery being abolished, right?

Or perhaps it was a market that refused to recognize that some things, like people, are not a commodity to be bought or sold. It took government to put an end to it by changing the definition of human rights, or arguably just the definition of human.

The problem with "shaping" the market to do what you want is that it has already been done many many times over and over, usually you don't get what you want, you just distort the market into all sorts of unforeseen consequences, and you open yet another precedent for more intervention and abuse to "correct" that distortion that you created in the first place.

Why ban murder or theft then? Clearly that hurts the protection racketeers and organized crime syndicates, who obviously serve a vital role in society since they remain economically viable, and "big police" hasn't been able to totally eliminate them, so why keep trying?

In fact, what we have are already extremely distorted markets, and you're thinking cap'n trade, which is just another great idea, would just fly in and save the day?

I know! In the good old days you could require 100 hour work weeks, never give any paid leave, benefits, pension, and you didn't have to worry about minimum wage cutting into your profits.

Oh yes, and can't forget all the child labor. Ahh, back in the good old days, there was no public education, and kids just went straight to work in the fields & factories...

I'm not sure why libertarian-minded people put forward this trivially disproven canard about how government interference in the economy have never, ever, in the history of mankind done anything that was a net benefit to society.

There's a certain understanding about free markets that, when you get it, you know a free market has a tendency to correct itself with time. Even if it takes a while. I believe that's also the case when it comes to the environment.

Many religious people tell me this same thing about God. Once you "get it", you realize that God's plan always works out for the best, even if it takes a while and lots of horrible things happen in the "short run."

That is faith, not reason. I can respect faith for what it is, but don't try to pass it off as some sort of scientific conclusion beyond debate. Your view of economics is equivalent to intelligent design -- it's "science" where the conclusion is the starting point for the the theory.

I'm not saying markets can't produce positive results, but I am saying there are no guarantees the the results it produces are morally superior to one that's been shaped by law. There's no guarantee laws will produce the desired results either, but many have, and have been successful beyond people's wildest dreams.

Just like freedom of expression: I'm sure there's a LOT of crap out there, but I know that things that make sense, ideas that work, philosophies and knowledge that help us instead of deceive us, they end up staying. The rest gets slowly culled out.

Only if people actually read their history. Only if information isn't manipulated. Only if people care. The scenario in 1984 is just as likely to be enacted by private industry as it is by government.

I don't know that a law could guarantee us a perfectly objective view of history. I do think the best law for that is the 1st amendment, which protects people's freedom of speech. By the way, that's a big "intervention" in the economy too, especially if you outlaw fraud!

You may have noticed I love making the free market --> freedom of expression comparison a lot, not football or traffic, etc.

I do notice that you repeatedly conflate them, rather than provide any practical real world examples that support your theory. Has a "free market" as you would define it ever existed? If not, how would you know how "free" it really would be?

So when I talk about free market, it's like a chimera, most people can't imagine it, some even think it's bad, and few people care. I hope our descendants can laugh at us about it.

It is very much like a Chimera! It's a mythological creature that nobody believes was anything but a convenient storytelling device, and while people can imagine that genetic engineering may one day let us create one, what would we make it look like? It's been depicted in thousands of different ways, and it's unlikely you could ever get people to unanimously agree that any one interpretation of it is the one and only true Chimera...

Our descendants will laugh at us, because they will say that by the 21st century the laissez-faire economic theory has resulted in horrors for humanity time and time again, and yet people still clung to it despite that.

They will also laugh (or cry) about how we so shortsightedly wiped out much of the Earth's ecosystem with our hubris, fueled by adherence to thoroughly disproven and discredited absolutist theories such as yours.