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Does it bother you that you are subsidizing defective genetics and thus making humanity less fit and thus increasing the average level of suffering? You might t

by thuffy 14y ago

Does it bother you that you are subsidizing defective genetics and thus making humanity less fit and thus increasing the average level of suffering? You might think you are being nice by decreasing the suffering of an individual, but you are also dooming consciousness to suffer being born into a defective host that otherwise would not have happened if not for your subsidization of defective genetics. I am curious as to what the higher than average enlightened readership of HN thinks on this? Of course it is very taboo to say what I did as the medical industrial complex is on the side of causing this problem as they are then guaranteed not just one more customer, but a new lineage of customers.

mjohn 14y ago
I have never commented before, but I had to reply to this. I assume you are being serious, but hope you just have a twisted sense of humor, or perhaps you have just read too much Schopenhauer recently. I believe that just because someone is born with a disadvantage or have health issues does not mean they are defective. Everyone has as much a right to life as anyone else. In support of your beliefs, I would be interested to know your responses to the following questions: At what point does a person's suffering cause a sufficient decline in the global "average level of suffering" to imply they should not be allowed to reproduce or continue living? Should all sick people be left to die? Should we serve the depressed arsenic instead of offering counselling and medication? Should we just execute people of higher than average IQ, since ignorance is bliss? We all have defects, should we all die to spare the planet? How do you calculate average suffering? What is the unit of measure? Does the momentary joy of seeing the birth of a child outweigh years of chronic pain?
- thuffy 14y ago
  No, I am not joking at all. This is a serious mater. Unless you want humanity to eventually degenerate to beyond even the point where everyone is dependent on multiple surgeries simply to live past just being born, then this is something that needs to be though about, discussed, and rectified - no mater how difficult a subject. Some of your questions appear to me to be purposely absurd in order to make the topic seem absurd. To answer your first question though, which is a reasonable one: It may not be a simple answer of some point is too defective, but the answer there must obviously be something other than the current idea that no level of defectiveness is too defective to be aided to breed more unfortunate burdened souls. My personal feeling is that the line has to be somewhere around being too defective to live without medical intervention beyond childhood or perhaps better is the point before one is otherwise able to have children and raise and support them to the age where they are self supportive. Your pointing out that the issue is a complex one with no easy answer does not justify the continued destructive course that humanity is treading down. Regardless of how hard an issue it is to solve, it must be recognized that the current setup of unlimited medical intervention to keep people alive and breeding, no mater how defective, in fact results in a degenerating gene pool, a downward spiral of suffering. This is the true reason why medicare costs keep increasing to the point now where it is the majority expenditure of any western nation (even in America, it is greater there than how much is spent on the military). Again you can see why the medical industrial complex is set on continuing this trend. If not for the limits of economics, this would eventually consume all resources of the world just to keep itself alive with medicine. In some countries this has led to the talk of not providing medical intervention for some groups of people who need it to survive. Unfortunately the talk is always around not giving it to the old people in order to save money. While they may seem less important to save, it is actually the wrong group to withhold intervention from, as saving old people is not destructive to the gene pool. They need to start talking about withholding it from the opposite end of the age spectrum.
  - chris_wot 14y ago
    The issue is only complex because you believe that some people have inferior DNA than other people, and you posit that there exists some people who are "defective", and who should not pass on their genes through reproduction. Your reasoning is absurd, and has been demonstrated as such by the questions asked of you. Such questioning is part of a valid form of argument known as reductio ad absurdum. It has the unfortunate (some would argue fortunate!) side effect of making the one putting forwarded the invalid argument look ridiculous. Of course, sometimes reducing to the absurd occurs in reality. It wasn't that long ago that sterilisation of those deemed "defective" was being done in first world countries such as the U.S. Your ideas are a branch of eugenics, which has been widely discredited for some time now. So before you tell the readership of HN that the idea should be taken seriously, I regret to inform you that not only have people done so, but the majority categorically reject it for extremely good reasons.
    - thuffy 14y ago
      If a program's code (DNA) has bugs that cause the system to fail when running without expensive workarounds (medical intervention), would that not be called bugs in the code? Also called defects? Thus it is defective code that cannot run without expensive workarounds. Your understanding of what is eugenics is flawed. What I am talking about is not eugenics. Eugenics is artificial selection for attempted good. What is happening is artificial selection that results in degeneration, which is bad. That is called dysgenics. I am against that, and thus you can only call my argument anti-dysgenic. Anyways, it is your comment that is absurd, as demonstrated by the majority of it being an insult. Try to remain civil - it better facilitates enlightenment of all parties to the discussion.
      - chris_wot 14y ago
        You are seeing insults where there are none. I don't believe that comparing humanity with computer code is particularly wise. However, to use your analogy - if there is a bug in the code you fix it, and you correct any problems that the bug causes. That would be the ideal of modern science, but we aren't there yet. To be able to implement your ideas of genetic purity (which is basically your argument!) we would need to either a. Stop those with genetic "defects" from breeding, or b. withdraw treatment from them and hope they die before they have offspring, or c. end the life of those people to take away strain from the medical system and prevent them from reproducing. Regardless, to know this there would need to be mandatory mass screening of the population to make these determinations. Go work out the moral objections and monetary costs that would result from THAT, if you will! Furthermore, your original argument is that those with congenital defects cause excessive strain on health systems. Yet where do you get your figures from? I would be very interested. Yet there is more that you haven't considered. Using your own argument - which I find to be so terribly wrong - you haven't considered that not assisting those with a genetic defect may remove positive genetic attributes from the gene pool. Now you have the problem of judging whether one aspect of their genetics should cause them to propagate their genes. But if you do let that propagate, then you are exhibiting anti-dysgenics, which you abhore. What makes your argument particularly specious is that you never consider the intrinsic worth of the person receiving the treatment. On top of this, you think that it is moral to refuse treatment for those suffering from illnesses because they are defective. And yet they are not defective, they have a particular defect that is causing them medical problems. In short, I consider your ideas cruel, inequitable, poorly reasoned and ill-considered. That's not an insult: it's a reasoned opinion.
dfcsd 14y ago
It's only a problem when people with clearly defective genes are having children. It's ok to cure people with defective genes as long as they do not breed.

by thuffy 14y ago

mjohn 14y ago

I have never commented before, but I had to reply to this. I assume you are being serious, but hope you just have a twisted sense of humor, or perhaps you have just read too much Schopenhauer recently. I believe that just because someone is born with a disadvantage or have health issues does not mean they are defective. Everyone has as much a right to life as anyone else. In support of your beliefs, I would be interested to know your responses to the following questions: At what point does a person's suffering cause a sufficient decline in the global "average level of suffering" to imply they should not be allowed to reproduce or continue living? Should all sick people be left to die? Should we serve the depressed arsenic instead of offering counselling and medication? Should we just execute people of higher than average IQ, since ignorance is bliss? We all have defects, should we all die to spare the planet? How do you calculate average suffering? What is the unit of measure? Does the momentary joy of seeing the birth of a child outweigh years of chronic pain?

thuffy 14y ago
No, I am not joking at all. This is a serious mater. Unless you want humanity to eventually degenerate to beyond even the point where everyone is dependent on multiple surgeries simply to live past just being born, then this is something that needs to be though about, discussed, and rectified - no mater how difficult a subject. Some of your questions appear to me to be purposely absurd in order to make the topic seem absurd. To answer your first question though, which is a reasonable one: It may not be a simple answer of some point is too defective, but the answer there must obviously be something other than the current idea that no level of defectiveness is too defective to be aided to breed more unfortunate burdened souls. My personal feeling is that the line has to be somewhere around being too defective to live without medical intervention beyond childhood or perhaps better is the point before one is otherwise able to have children and raise and support them to the age where they are self supportive. Your pointing out that the issue is a complex one with no easy answer does not justify the continued destructive course that humanity is treading down. Regardless of how hard an issue it is to solve, it must be recognized that the current setup of unlimited medical intervention to keep people alive and breeding, no mater how defective, in fact results in a degenerating gene pool, a downward spiral of suffering. This is the true reason why medicare costs keep increasing to the point now where it is the majority expenditure of any western nation (even in America, it is greater there than how much is spent on the military). Again you can see why the medical industrial complex is set on continuing this trend. If not for the limits of economics, this would eventually consume all resources of the world just to keep itself alive with medicine. In some countries this has led to the talk of not providing medical intervention for some groups of people who need it to survive. Unfortunately the talk is always around not giving it to the old people in order to save money. While they may seem less important to save, it is actually the wrong group to withhold intervention from, as saving old people is not destructive to the gene pool. They need to start talking about withholding it from the opposite end of the age spectrum.
- chris_wot 14y ago
  The issue is only complex because you believe that some people have inferior DNA than other people, and you posit that there exists some people who are "defective", and who should not pass on their genes through reproduction. Your reasoning is absurd, and has been demonstrated as such by the questions asked of you. Such questioning is part of a valid form of argument known as reductio ad absurdum. It has the unfortunate (some would argue fortunate!) side effect of making the one putting forwarded the invalid argument look ridiculous. Of course, sometimes reducing to the absurd occurs in reality. It wasn't that long ago that sterilisation of those deemed "defective" was being done in first world countries such as the U.S. Your ideas are a branch of eugenics, which has been widely discredited for some time now. So before you tell the readership of HN that the idea should be taken seriously, I regret to inform you that not only have people done so, but the majority categorically reject it for extremely good reasons.
  - thuffy 14y ago
    If a program's code (DNA) has bugs that cause the system to fail when running without expensive workarounds (medical intervention), would that not be called bugs in the code? Also called defects? Thus it is defective code that cannot run without expensive workarounds. Your understanding of what is eugenics is flawed. What I am talking about is not eugenics. Eugenics is artificial selection for attempted good. What is happening is artificial selection that results in degeneration, which is bad. That is called dysgenics. I am against that, and thus you can only call my argument anti-dysgenic. Anyways, it is your comment that is absurd, as demonstrated by the majority of it being an insult. Try to remain civil - it better facilitates enlightenment of all parties to the discussion.
    - chris_wot 14y ago
      You are seeing insults where there are none. I don't believe that comparing humanity with computer code is particularly wise. However, to use your analogy - if there is a bug in the code you fix it, and you correct any problems that the bug causes. That would be the ideal of modern science, but we aren't there yet. To be able to implement your ideas of genetic purity (which is basically your argument!) we would need to either a. Stop those with genetic "defects" from breeding, or b. withdraw treatment from them and hope they die before they have offspring, or c. end the life of those people to take away strain from the medical system and prevent them from reproducing. Regardless, to know this there would need to be mandatory mass screening of the population to make these determinations. Go work out the moral objections and monetary costs that would result from THAT, if you will! Furthermore, your original argument is that those with congenital defects cause excessive strain on health systems. Yet where do you get your figures from? I would be very interested. Yet there is more that you haven't considered. Using your own argument - which I find to be so terribly wrong - you haven't considered that not assisting those with a genetic defect may remove positive genetic attributes from the gene pool. Now you have the problem of judging whether one aspect of their genetics should cause them to propagate their genes. But if you do let that propagate, then you are exhibiting anti-dysgenics, which you abhore. What makes your argument particularly specious is that you never consider the intrinsic worth of the person receiving the treatment. On top of this, you think that it is moral to refuse treatment for those suffering from illnesses because they are defective. And yet they are not defective, they have a particular defect that is causing them medical problems. In short, I consider your ideas cruel, inequitable, poorly reasoned and ill-considered. That's not an insult: it's a reasoned opinion.

dfcsd 14y ago

It's only a problem when people with clearly defective genes are having children. It's ok to cure people with defective genes as long as they do not breed.