there are some valid concerns of resource allocation, but it will always be the case that 1) not everyone will agree on what the #1 priority is, 2) it's impossible for every single scientist to work on one thing, and 3) if cancer were all scientist worked on, people would get pretty damn upset at the lack of progress in other areas.
anyway, it's a fucking thought experiment. roll with it.
(i forgot to mention the obvious diminishing-returns fact that having everybody work on cancer would probably not substantially accelerate the pace of cancer research.)
no, i didn't mean to! i'm just interested in people's real answer to the question.
for some reason i was reading about Anne Frank tonight (one of those wiki-wanderings), and came to the conclusion that the holocaust sucked. so did the rwandan genocide, and darfur, etc., etc. the basis for these ultimate horrors seems to be simply that people are capable of it--that under any circumstances, not enough people will stand up and say "this is bullshit." so what if we could magically change the way people are?
If we get rid of genocide, that's 1/3 of Sabu's gimmick. And since Chris Benoit already stole the other 2/3, where would that leave poor old Sabu? Just a broken down piece of meat blowing his spots.
there are all sorts of practical nightmares, of course, but the transhumanist in me wants to say yes. it would need to be a process über-rigorously examined and approved by a completely transparent, multiparty international scientific committee, which i think would be enough for me to trust it. in that case, we're eliminating the possibility (in the sense of making the probability statistically negligible) of effecting other behavioral changes; we're only removing personal liberty to engage in genocidal behavior or attitudes.
(this assumes the human brain can still function if genocidal attitude is prevented, which might just be unfeasible.)
so, i'm in favor of this precise but dramatic reduction in liberty if it 100% removes the possibility of another ethnic cleansing. i would require it and enforce it. i would want a virus designed that would change the germ-line genome worldwide so it could never happen again.
of course, i guess it could get us into trouble if we ever need to battle conquering alien invaders....
I was alluding to this earlier...wanting genocide gone is not the issue. I don't think you'll find many people who would be against elminating awful things. I think you WILL find many people who would be against eliminating the choice to do awful things. For many people free will, and freedom of thought (which this plan would also infringe), are sacrosanct.
To clarify: if the question were "can we TEACH the world that genocide is wrong", I would be all for it. Forcibly taking away people's right to believe something makes me uncomfortable.
Caveat: I am, to use a technical term, a huge namby-pamby.
there is no cause so great that it's worth the sacrifice of free will. It may start with "genocidal tendencies" but who's to say it's going to end there? What if perfectly healthy but "taboo" things like homosexuality, "deviant sexual behavior", gambling, consumption of recreational drugs and alcohol, what if these are linked genetically and can be switched off and be mandated by the government?
you said yourself you hate it when religion meddles with personal and private affairs but is this no better than bible thumpers pushing their precevied agenda on people?
i've alays held the belief that if you give up free will to fight your cause then you've already lost your cause. to lose something so basely human as agression, and let's face it, if this happens it wouldn't be as elegant as "losing genocidal tendencies" but rather "losing one's agression" to prevent a POSSIBLE catastrophe is a crime in and of itself.
Saying such a process is needed and should be mandated to people means you've given up on humanity. You've given up on the human will to fight all that is natural of them to do what we perceive as "the right thing." It's like a parent not allowing a child to make their own decisions in life. I consider myself an optimist but I admit mankind fucks up. Mankind fucks up all the time. But it's those mistakes that make us realize just how far we can fall, and make us want to do something more. Think how far people have come along after emancipation, the holocaust, the civil rights movement, horishima and nagasaki, vietnam, nanjing. As terrible as these and other events are they also allowed mankind to show their capacity for kindness, compassion and progress. So why should everyone on the earth be punished and be stripped of something that is vital, if it wasn't we'd have evolved out of having this capacity for aggression by now, because a high MINORITY will abuse it. That's like digging up an entire garden to kill a weed, it's an inelegant solution.
how can my super-virus be inelegant?! it's a super-virus!
i totally get what you're saying, but i disagree on three important counts.
1. even if you have a strong concept of "free will," you have to admit that a lot of choices are not as free as they appear to us; our minds are manipulated in all sorts of ways that aren't apparent to us. i mean in essence, all you are is the end-product of an endless series of manipulations that conspired to wire your brain in extremely precise ways that basically dictate your actions (and your perception of "you" being the cause of those actions). the difference here is that one thing in that series of manipulations would be intentional rather than accidental. if we can assuage ethical concerns about the actual consequences, why would we not want to embrace a conscious choice to improve humanity in one unambiguous and seemingly desperately needed way? we already seem to have certain hard-wired mores that are universal (certain acts seem to be deemed wrong by every large culture that's been identified). why not add one more?
2. i'm all for an amount of sensitivity to cultural relativism, but on certain Big Issues i am more than happy to stand up and say, "no. i'm just right on this, and you're wrong." i don't think the slope is that slippery, though, since there's such a huge gulf between the behaviors i'd call reprehensible (e.g., ritual female genital cutting), and those i'd call, "so reprehensible there's just no question that it should be wiped from the earth" (e.g., holocaust).
3. keeping genocidal tendencies around to provide a reminder of humanity's lowest points ignores the fact that we already have such a rich history of genocide to draw upon. revisionist history can slowly erase some of them, but i seriously doubt all these atrocities will ever be forgotten, especially with the modern democratization of information. not to get too star-trekky here, but if the worldwide community ever did accomplish this, i think it would become an automatic teaching moment integral to all study of history (like the biggest unit in every child's textbook), that would ensure future generations would continue to learn the reasons it was considered necessary.
posted on Friday, Jan 22nd by le_sacre
I'd tell SCIENCE to stop fucking around and cure cancer already.
yeah, cancer turned out to be tricky, didn't it?
there are some valid concerns of resource allocation, but it will always be the case that 1) not everyone will agree on what the #1 priority is, 2) it's impossible for every single scientist to work on one thing, and 3) if cancer were all scientist worked on, people would get pretty damn upset at the lack of progress in other areas.
anyway, it's a fucking thought experiment. roll with it.
(i forgot to mention the obvious diminishing-returns fact that having everybody work on cancer would probably not substantially accelerate the pace of cancer research.)
Did I just get moded?
i'm not sure. first i have to urban-dictionary-search "mode."
no, i didn't mean to! i'm just interested in people's real answer to the question.
for some reason i was reading about Anne Frank tonight (one of those wiki-wanderings), and came to the conclusion that the holocaust sucked. so did the rwandan genocide, and darfur, etc., etc. the basis for these ultimate horrors seems to be simply that people are capable of it--that under any circumstances, not enough people will stand up and say "this is bullshit." so what if we could magically change the way people are?
no
If we get rid of genocide, that's 1/3 of Sabu's gimmick. And since Chris Benoit already stole the other 2/3, where would that leave poor old Sabu? Just a broken down piece of meat blowing his spots.
that... was the greatest ever
and i've revealed my wrestling nerd tendencies once again!
Yeah that was basically a joke for you and no one else.
Oh shit, twigs and Dr. A, internet bffs???
no.
Pretty tough to sell people on a forced loss of some of their free will, even if it revolves around something abhorrent.
i'm going to agree with the "no" answers. it's just too slippery of a slope.
am i the only yes vote?
there are all sorts of practical nightmares, of course, but the transhumanist in me wants to say yes. it would need to be a process über-rigorously examined and approved by a completely transparent, multiparty international scientific committee, which i think would be enough for me to trust it. in that case, we're eliminating the possibility (in the sense of making the probability statistically negligible) of effecting other behavioral changes; we're only removing personal liberty to engage in genocidal behavior or attitudes.
(this assumes the human brain can still function if genocidal attitude is prevented, which might just be unfeasible.)
so, i'm in favor of this precise but dramatic reduction in liberty if it 100% removes the possibility of another ethnic cleansing. i would require it and enforce it. i would want a virus designed that would change the germ-line genome worldwide so it could never happen again.
of course, i guess it could get us into trouble if we ever need to battle conquering alien invaders....
I was alluding to this earlier...wanting genocide gone is not the issue. I don't think you'll find many people who would be against elminating awful things. I think you WILL find many people who would be against eliminating the choice to do awful things. For many people free will, and freedom of thought (which this plan would also infringe), are sacrosanct.
To clarify: if the question were "can we TEACH the world that genocide is wrong", I would be all for it. Forcibly taking away people's right to believe something makes me uncomfortable.
Caveat: I am, to use a technical term, a huge namby-pamby.
there is no cause so great that it's worth the sacrifice of free will. It may start with "genocidal tendencies" but who's to say it's going to end there? What if perfectly healthy but "taboo" things like homosexuality, "deviant sexual behavior", gambling, consumption of recreational drugs and alcohol, what if these are linked genetically and can be switched off and be mandated by the government?
you said yourself you hate it when religion meddles with personal and private affairs but is this no better than bible thumpers pushing their precevied agenda on people?
i've alays held the belief that if you give up free will to fight your cause then you've already lost your cause. to lose something so basely human as agression, and let's face it, if this happens it wouldn't be as elegant as "losing genocidal tendencies" but rather "losing one's agression" to prevent a POSSIBLE catastrophe is a crime in and of itself.
Saying such a process is needed and should be mandated to people means you've given up on humanity. You've given up on the human will to fight all that is natural of them to do what we perceive as "the right thing." It's like a parent not allowing a child to make their own decisions in life. I consider myself an optimist but I admit mankind fucks up. Mankind fucks up all the time. But it's those mistakes that make us realize just how far we can fall, and make us want to do something more. Think how far people have come along after emancipation, the holocaust, the civil rights movement, horishima and nagasaki, vietnam, nanjing. As terrible as these and other events are they also allowed mankind to show their capacity for kindness, compassion and progress. So why should everyone on the earth be punished and be stripped of something that is vital, if it wasn't we'd have evolved out of having this capacity for aggression by now, because a high MINORITY will abuse it. That's like digging up an entire garden to kill a weed, it's an inelegant solution.
how can my super-virus be inelegant?! it's a super-virus!
i totally get what you're saying, but i disagree on three important counts.
1. even if you have a strong concept of "free will," you have to admit that a lot of choices are not as free as they appear to us; our minds are manipulated in all sorts of ways that aren't apparent to us. i mean in essence, all you are is the end-product of an endless series of manipulations that conspired to wire your brain in extremely precise ways that basically dictate your actions (and your perception of "you" being the cause of those actions). the difference here is that one thing in that series of manipulations would be intentional rather than accidental. if we can assuage ethical concerns about the actual consequences, why would we not want to embrace a conscious choice to improve humanity in one unambiguous and seemingly desperately needed way?
we already seem to have certain hard-wired mores that are universal (certain acts seem to be deemed wrong by every large culture that's been identified). why not add one more?
2. i'm all for an amount of sensitivity to cultural relativism, but on certain Big Issues i am more than happy to stand up and say, "no. i'm just right on this, and you're wrong." i don't think the slope is that slippery, though, since there's such a huge gulf between the behaviors i'd call reprehensible (e.g., ritual female genital cutting), and those i'd call, "so reprehensible there's just no question that it should be wiped from the earth" (e.g., holocaust).
3. keeping genocidal tendencies around to provide a reminder of humanity's lowest points ignores the fact that we already have such a rich history of genocide to draw upon. revisionist history can slowly erase some of them, but i seriously doubt all these atrocities will ever be forgotten, especially with the modern democratization of information.
not to get too star-trekky here, but if the worldwide community ever did accomplish this, i think it would become an automatic teaching moment integral to all study of history (like the biggest unit in every child's textbook), that would ensure future generations would continue to learn the reasons it was considered necessary.