Lumifer comments on Thoughts on minimizing designer baby drama - Less Wrong

17 [deleted] 12 May 2015 11:22AM

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Comment author: Lumifer 12 May 2015 06:40:25PM 3 points [-]

Remember there's not a trade-off here.

I don't know about that. I feel pretty certain there will be trade-offs, we don't know yet of what kind and how severe.

Maxing out the "intelligence" dial is an easy way to compete.

So, I switch on a TV and lo and behold! The Kardashian sisters! They clearly won at life. So if I want my daughters to win at life like them, what do I maximize? X-)

In your social circle intelligence is paramount, in others -- not necessarily.

I think most parents would prefer not to give birth to a psychopath

The opposite of obedient to authority is not "psychopath", it's "troublemaker". Like Richard Feynman, for example.

Comment author: gjm 13 May 2015 11:19:06AM 3 points [-]

The opposite of obedient to authority is not "psychopath", it's "troublemaker".

It looks as if you're responding to JM4 as if he's claiming "it's OK to have laws requiring babies to be tweaked for obedience to authority, because that's how we avoid getting psychopaths". But it looks to me as if he's actually claiming "There won't be laws requiring babies to be tweaked for obedience to authority -- the populace wouldn't stand for it. What there might be is laws requiring them to be tweaked for not-being-psychopaths, and that would be OK".

It's perfectly reasonable to be concerned that what there would actually be is a law called the Psychopathy Prevention Act whose text, when read carefully, in fact requires babies to be tweaked for obedience to authority. But if indeed that's what would happen then JM4's problem is not that he approves of enforcing obedience to authority but that he is making a wrong prediction about future politics.

Comment author: Lumifer 13 May 2015 03:10:04PM 5 points [-]

I mostly have slippery slope concerns here. Once you've given the government the right to choose some -- any -- characteristics of your children, I fear the list of these characteristics can only expand.