Apologies for the clickbaity title. A question that I've often come across is how much freedom should science fiction writers have in world building. Is it permissible to take liberty with the laws of physics? Is it OK to depict anthropomorphic AIs? I hold the opinion that fantasy and SF...
A VOLUNTARY EUGENICS SCHEME
In 2020, caring for people with Alzheimer's will cost an estimated $305 billion. This is just the cost in the US alone. This also seems like a notoriously hard disease to find a cure against. An estimated 5.5 million people in the US currently suffer from Alzheimer's, most of whom are over 65. Even if thrice that number (~16 million) are young carriers of Alzheimer's, we can solve this more effectively.
If the government introduced a contract which awarded $30000 to people who were carriers of Alzheimer's on the condition that they do not produce children, we will manage to significantly reduce the number of cases. These people can... (read more)
I think it depends on the amount of money involved in the predictions! If the reward for correct predictions is high enough, people with political power might be incentivised to perform a military version of 'insider trading' and escalate/call off a war.
Apologies for the clickbaity title. A question that I've often come across is how much freedom should science fiction writers have in world building. Is it permissible to take liberty with the laws of physics? Is it OK to depict anthropomorphic AIs?
I hold the opinion that fantasy and SF writers should feel free to create unrealistic pictures of the future, so long as they do it consistently. They should feel free to conjure up worlds that are not probable, like creating an analytic complex valued function, which is partly obfuscated. However, the world is an enjoyable experience only if the culture and plot are entailed by the axioms of the world.... (read more)
You're absolutely right, Alzheimer's is a bad example. My intention was to show that an alternative strategy of this kind may exist for 'curing' certain diseases.