So what is so immoral about genetic engineering people to weed out genetic diseases, enhance intelligence, height, etc?

so where do you stand on it? asking genuinely here

So then when do we hit the brakes on the genetic engineering train?
What's going to stop the genetically engineered man from turning around and looking at those who created him and saying that his creators are unfit to live?

It's not 'immoral' so much as 'unfair.' There's the slippery slope argument, but it really comes down to the fact that you as someone that already exists, cannot be physically reborn as muh 6' 300 IQ Aryan God.

We don't kill people with Down's. Some do, but as a society, we frown on that and try to make their lives as pleasant as possible. Within the confines of their own intelligence, of course. I've always thought it strange that people default to murderous psychopathy. Why wouldn't that be one of the first traits weeded out?

Not really am answer but in the mid game, before the brainlets are breed out, we'd have a shitload of crime because they'd be unable to find work and would nigg3r around all day.

And who decides what traits are desirable? If parents could choose everyone would just go for le standard ubermensch, devaluing said traits and Wouldn't it halt human progress a bit if we all thought and were built the same?

Ok, so instead of killing them, we castrate them or watch them closely and pevent them from breeding at all costs.

Do you really think that's going to sit well with someone who has a 130 IQ and experiences feelings and sexual urges like any other human being? Do you really think they're going to accept that fate because someone with a 150 IQ told them to do it?

The people that want to restrict are the only immoral ones here. We have an opportunity to remove some pretty horrendous diseases and, in time, generally improve ourselves. The technology, the knowledge, it's completely neutral. It's about how society uses it, and since we don't actively commit infanticide against those with downs syndrome and the like, I see no reason to believe that we'll suddenly start killing those that aren't as "enhanced" as others.

>Right now we're just removing debilitating, life long illnesses.
>Next stop neo-Hitler and the unenhanced holocaust.

Like I said, kill yourself.

>It's not 'immoral' so much as 'unfair.' There's the slippery slope argument, but it really comes down to the fact that you as someone that already exists, cannot be physically reborn as muh 6' 300 IQ Aryan God.

I hate this argument, we are, as we speak, growing old, and thus becoming increasingly irrelevant. To demand the next generation to be hamstrung by the same limitations as us, is to demand suffering in the face of technological uplift.

If we leave it at removing genetic disease then yeah that's perfectly fine. The OP asked about the immorality of selecting for intelligence and height in addition to genetic disease.

Genetic engineering becomes entirely immoral when taken past removing genetic diseases.

>becomes entirely immoral
Why? Give me one reason, one good reason, it's immoral.

Redefine stupidity as a disease.

See
If we treat people who aren't cream of the crop similar to how we treat downies now, it'd be pretty fucked up. Downies have a more limited scope when it comes to experience and emotion so we can get away with the heavy monitoring and limiting their freedoms. That won't sit so well with someone who has a 130 IQ, especially when it's being enforced by some kid 20 years younger, and you were able to have all the freedom you wanted when you were on top of the genetics world just a decade ago.

You can't have people go from on top of the world to being treated like downies everytime a new generation reaches maturity. That's just fucked up.

Because that would make you a livestock instead of human. I mean if you were genetically engneered.

When it comes to clonning a twin of oneself there is also alot of problems with identity, so to say if you get a clone, what legal rights it does have or you two share same birth certificate and legal rights/wealth/marriage? I think you get the idea.

Humans had it's way and genetical altering is the future of mankind, but there are also changes to be made on cultural/moral and of course legal matters for that to happen.

By the way, what makes one human? Would removing a fetus of it's genetic code or altering beyond recognition would make it human still? I mean on the level yo alter a human fetus to produce a cat.

>See

But that's a retarded post, made by a retard. Still waiting for a good reason it's immoral, so far you're just speculating on what society would do.

Stupidity is subjective. You can't seriously advocate for the limitations of a person's freedom just because they have an IQ of 130 when the latest generation of designer babies has an IQ of 150.

>Stupidity is subjective.
>have an IQ of 130 when the latest generation of designer babies has an IQ of 150
Sounds like it's not subjective at all.

How is it retarded? You sound like you can't refute it and you're trying to dismiss the argument as unimportant when it actually is.

To me it's much less about the immorality of the act itself (it's fine and possibly the hottest shit ever), but rather how it's implemented. If we go for "rich people enhance the shit out of themselves" then rich people basically gain a permanent lock on the upper tiers of society. It seems like the fairest way to go about it would be to
>wipe out every disease we can
>then hold a lottery as to who can enhance their children, keep upping the crop of winners as tech progresses until we all have easy access

...you don't know what subjective means do you?

>>Sounds like it's not subjective at all.
im not seeing what draws the line exactly at 130 other than people saying it is so.

>How is it retarded?
Because the question is "why is this immoral" and the reply was some retarded speculation that, should we be able to increase iq with each generation without bounds, that each new generation would actively curtail the rights of the previous one.

It's such a huge leap it barely even worth considering; a completely equivalent (equally valid) point would be the newer generation, being so smart, would look up to the older one for the wisdom and experience they posses.

To assume one over the other is, as I've said, retarded.

I don't think you understand anything, and just using straw men to argue some asinine
pointless shit.

Your argument is that people's ego will get in the way of meritocracy? I don't get it...

>>Your argument is that people's ego will get in the way of meritocracy? I don't get it...
not my argument, not the exact words i was responding to

Why do we enhance performance? What is the end game? Surely we do not exist just to become superior. We earn money for example to spend it and the more we spend the more inferior we are at accumulating money.

Of course liberals will just say "hurr that's retarded, nazis are bad". Purposely infecting your offspring with genetic diseases that will adversely affect their quality of life is immoral and no amount of mental gymnastics can change that.

I think in the future we need a balance. If people want to pass their shitty genes to their kids then other people should not have to suffer from the consequences of their choices. Capitalism will see to that. Genetic modification of humans I think will solve most of these problems though.

This isn't really a major issue.

This kinda made me think: what constitutes our human identity?

We care about the survival of our, the human race, right? But what if for some reason Earth became uninhabitable for humans? But we could engineer a being that would kinda look almost like us, be as smart as us and be able to survive. Would we do that? Or if we could create a robot that would be able to survive. Would it all matter to us, humanity, if we won't make it anyways?

do you look up to old christian republican white people for their wisdom and experience?

no because theyre fucking retarded

Your logic seems suspicious, although your conclusion seems legit....

Sort of a reverse appeal to authority, though. Just because they are retarded, doesn't mean they don't have the answer, even if its source is magical.

Morality is a Platonic object. It claims the same rhetorical persuasion as a physical law, but both are stories. It is just that the physical law is a story that is useful to be believed.

Why don't you get a CRISPR setup and clone one of your moles? Or swap out some ecoli genes with some of your own. See what happens.

I mean, how can one talk about morality in research when you elect the fucking devil as president and still keep a strait face?

This is such a great fucking argument I'm convinced I was wrong all along. Holy shit user.

>Do you really think that's going to sit well with someone who has a 130 IQ and experiences feelings and sexual urges like any other human being? Do you really think they're going to accept that fate because someone with a 150 IQ told them to do it?

1) Are people with Down's actually castrated on the regular, as procedure, or is that what you think should happen to them?

2) People with Down's don't really understand the world around them due to their relatively limited intelligence. Relative to the 200s and 300s that would control the lives of the 100s, it wouldn't really be that different. They'd be coralled into places they think they want to be, do things they think they wanted to, and so on. It would be no different from now, really, if you accept the existence of Gods.

There's nothing immoral about it, it's just that people who have access to it now don't want it to become popular because they want to reap the benefits.

I don't really understand why people think that we'd go ape over intelligence.

What we would care about most is height, with some demand for pigmentation stuff like blue eyes. Facial features are notoriously hard to pin down to genetics, but those would be in demand as well if it were possible to change them.

After that, everything else would be very secondary.

if you keep enhancing height we will become human giraffes

No we won't. We'll just become a ~7 foot population.

the very tallest in the world generally have acromegalic features, but people around the 7 foot mark generally look like normal humans who happen to be big.

Yao Ming is 7'6", but doesn't look all that different from a normal person.

Enhancing height seems counterproductive when all the fastest sprinters and best soccer players in my school were short, while all the lanky kids sucked at everything besides marathon.

Wasn't it like this for everyone? Lanky people have worse coordination than average because their limbs are slightly further from the brain and suffer from a longer delay in signals.

Morality is fictional, but you are retarded if you think you would be on the group who benefits from said engineering.

I'm pretty sure I would be in that group, though. You wouldn't, but I would be.

So the issue right now is that the tech, yes even CRISPR, sucks for humans. We can induce these genetic changes just not very well. Human embryos modified with CRISPR were found to a number of chromosomal defects in places that weren't supposed to be modified.

So genetically engineered people could end up with more genetic defects than without. We could learn from the process, yes, but we'd essentially be using humans as guinea pigs. This is work that's better left to primate models for now.

Alternatively errors might occur randomly such that we might be able to make 1 superman at the expense of making 25 retard babies. Is this necessarily worth the cost?

Tell that to Usain Bolt.

Lanky kids in their teenage years usually have problems with coordination because they are in the awkward phase of their growth where they haven't gotten used to having a few extra cm:s everywhere.

Evolution is basically an optimization process. The exact parameter that is maximized is hard to describe, but it is a function of billions of factors and it isn't enough to just go through the nearest local maximum and stay there. That's why we need the seemingly chaotic evolution in order to get better. The assumption that we know exactly what's better for us is ridiculous. We don't. If we go on and greedily optimize for intelligence and height, we would most definitely fuck things up. It's not as easy as one assumes, people are not working like game characters with 6 attributes that are either high or low. To make someone more intelligent, you actually need to improve the function of their brains and it's not like there is a single gene that decides whether the brain works well or not. Also, by choosing people genetically with an enormous bias we take out variety from our gene pool, which makes the population overall very weak (an experience gained from breeding animals and crops). A single disease is enough to wipe out the whole population.

Then there's of course the ethical problem. By "enhancing" some humans we are making part of humanity intrinsically more valuable. I know Veeky Forums shits on ethics because they are too narrow minded to see why it's important, but this will eventually lead to enormous problems (part of which are actually illustrated in gattaca).

Only a very small fraction of the population could enjoy it.

Also we would end up being nearly all the same. It would be the death of art.

Regulation.
There are no rules or laws in place,once those things are solved progress will be made.
Everything in this thread is like listening to kids in kindergarten talking about Goku.

It's an ethical disaster and you are basically playing god, a power no human should ever possess.

>Nothing, just doing what nature does, but faster.

You're implying the rate of mutation, mixing by miosis, epigenetics and therefore overall genetic drift and diversification is not evolutionary optimized for survival over at least 3 billion years.

There are about 3 parasitic species per 1 selfreliant, just waiting for an opening to exploit us (infect, eat, enslave, copy our genes, copy their genes into ours,...).

Terminator-genes on GMOs would be a good idea(TM), if it wasn't for reality - we're living on an old, microbiological planet, where horizontal gene transfer happens everywhere, all the time, even in 'sterile' laboratory environments.

t. sci. in cancer research, splicing genes for a living.

The answer to this question is the same for most "deeply concerning issues" : learn mandarin and fuck off to china to do actual science.

Better question:

>what is immoral

It's just a tool. Same as breaking atoms.
Ask what is immoral in capitalism and for what genetic engineering may be used in such a system.

>the fact that superior people exist is immoral
>smart and fit people should be banned

This is you. This is your "slippery slope" right there.

I just want my asthma to be cured

Except that is not at all what the post implies. The immorality doesn't lie in preventing superior people from existing. It comes with the idea that it is okay to limit the life of someone perceived as inferior for the sake of another perceived as superior. You'd essentially be treating people like computers and throwing them away every time a new version comes out.

This is already a moot point. If we don't do it in the West, other places around the world will. There's no point in having a moratorium on genetic enhancement anymore.

That picture depicts a bleak reality if you really think they're "real humans". All them bitches be wearing makeup and dye in their hair. I SEE THEM ROOTS, BITCH, YOU A BRUNETTE

So much for genetic superiority

it would create an elite of people with giant dicks, overpowered sperm, and off-the-charts IQ. Thus intelligently fucking everyone below their standarts of intelligence.

There is literally nothing wrong with genetic engineering.
We just have to be careful how we do it. It should be
1. Free and accessible to all
2. Mandatory for all, so that retard hillbillies don't go ruining their children's lives before they're even born (like the guy in Gattaca)
While the second point is a bit dystopian, the benefits far outweigh the costs. Think of it like mandatory vaccination.

Just like with everything else beneficial, it'll only be accessible to the elites.

There's nothing immoral about using genetic engineering.

The problems happen when dirtbags who know nothing about genetics starts blabbing about how we need to get rid of the blacks or the jews, or any group perceived as inferior despite there being no scientific basis for it

Because aside from weeding out genetic disease the rest is pointlessly vain and lacks any degree of genetic diversity.

Also
>Intelligence is 100% completely genetic

This as well.

Guy in Gattaca BTFO his genetically superior competition my dude.

So /pol/ infiltrators on Veeky Forums?

So then let's not limit people, just let them live. They might not be able to compete with future generations but okay, either we'll be giving everyone basic income and it won't matter, or we'll still find useful things for them to do anyway, or they'll be dead because eventually that happens

>So /pol/ infiltrators on Veeky Forums?

Exactamundo

Also yeah I don't get why people think we can just indefinitely keep improving intelligence through genetic shit alone.

Because they're not as smart as they think or wish they were and believe everything about someone can be completely boiled down to genetics.

They don't want to look past a person's genetic make up and look at the person themselves because then they'd have to take a look in the mirror and see how retarded they are.

LITERALLY THE PLOT OF GATTACA

They were justified in screening for genetic disorders, they do that right now for astronauts.
You can't have an astronaut in charge of several other lives and billions of dollars in equipment suffer a heart attack midway through a space walk.

They were doing it for basically anyone who wasn't a janitor. He was discriminated against in general for not being part of the ubermensch.

>not being part of the ubermensch
And whose fault was that? His dumb parents.

i dont like the idea because im 5'2 and 100 lbs

genetically fucked people should love the idea even more, as it gives them a greater opportunity to improve their genome.

Nothing, if you can get them to consent to it.

Weeding out genetic diseases is great and already happens, thanks CRISPR.

Increasing height is completely pointless, there's no advantage to greater height in modern society.

'Enhancing intelligence' is unfeasible for the foreseeable future because the genes that code for intelligence are so individually weak and so widespread that there's no way to have any idea what you're actually doing. And it makes sense, because you're essentially trying to alter the most complicated structure in the universe by slightly changing the specs and ratios of a few of the countless types of proteins that make it up, knowing neither exactly what each protein does and how it interacts with the others nor what you're even actually trying to achieve. Needless to say, improving the environment a given brain develops in and the nutrition it receives as it develops would have a vastly greater positive impact than hundreds of billions of dollars of genetic research could.

>there's no advantage to greater height in modern society.

There is nothing immoral about genetic engineering and it will become commonplace at some point in the near future. If not in America full of aging boomers who elect trump, don't believe global warming, don't believe in America and think "GMOs" are some kind of insidious evil created by illuminati reptilians then it will happen in China.

What people don't like is nazi meme science. Neither do they like not being in control of what happens. Most will use it to make sure their kids are healthy.

boards.Veeky Forums.org/r9k

There really isn't unless we have bones and organs that can support that height. Making people average 7ft but leaving them with hearts (or liver, or muscle fibers, or spinal fluid, or joint cartilage, or bone structure/density) that accommodate the average 5'10 person would just lead to a generation where everyone dies at 30 or even younger. That's why people with gigantism usually die young now. There's more to it than just clicking on the tall genes or selecting tall genes from the currently tall members of society and trying to turn it on for everyone else.

because there is actually a limited number of space for 150 IQ 6'3" ubermensch.

it will be less like gattaca and more like brave new world where people are not only engineered for their caste, but engineered to only want to be their caste.

bringing genetics in line with social structure will eventually stagnate the evolutionary process.

Sure, there are no physical advantages, and there are several disadvantages, but socially, being taller is hugely beneficial. Once designer babies enter the market, nobody will intentionally create manlets.

there isn't.

most Navy Seals and spec ops guys aren't that tall. the extra height only serves to increase wear and tear on the spine, knees, joints, etc when doing physical activity.

its also been shown that having a lot of body mass (fat or muscle) directly reduces your lifespan.

>kid no longer gets made fun of for being short in highschool
>dies at 35 because he still has mom and dad's manet heart genes
Way to go. Such beneficial.

>Increasing height is completely pointless
True

>there's no advantage to greater height in modern society.
Not true. All shitposting aside, women don't generally find short men attractive. And since the whole gene altering industry will mostly be driven by people's insecurities, this will be top on the list for altering.

>code for intelligence are so individually weak and so widespread that there's no way to have any idea what you're actually doing
Or is there? I thought the chinese were gathering geniuses' DNA to find exactly that. Theoretically, why would't we be able to pinpoint the section responsible for intelligence with some low-key human experimentation and comparing the results after ~10-15 years to find patterns?
And even without playing god, with mass DNA sequencing, I'm pretty sure we will get some pretty reliable patterns when it comes to external physical characteristics and intelligence.

Today OP was an even bigger faggot. Did a shorter dude take your bitch? Sorry

>so what is so immoral about genetic engineering people to weed out genetic diseases, enhance intelligence, height, etc?

It's currently logistically irresponsible, way too many of you chucklefucks value vanity over utiliy.

Obsessed with fucking, dick waving and show boating. Most of us have no god damn clue about possible conditions man will be dealing with years from now.

And those who do or at least try to provide models of it get heckled and say they're exaggerating the data.

>Making people average 7ft but leaving them with hearts (or liver, or muscle fibers, or spinal fluid, or joint cartilage, or bone structure/density) that accommodate the average 5'10 person would just lead to a generation where everyone dies at 30 or even younger.

So then surely you also believe that tall people should not have kids with short people, because it mixes up "small heart" and "big body" genes, making the offspring die early, right? Or did I just commit a thoughtcrime?

>That's why people with gigantism usually die young now.

At what age do people who are 6'5" die, compared with people who are 5'10"?

It will just hurt the feelings of the genetically inferior. And god forbid somone be butt hurt because they weren't born as a 6' white with brown hair blue eyes, 10/10 vision, an IQ of 200, perfect skin, no genetic disorders and able to gain muscle faster than the hulk. How immoral!

>6'

are you a turbo manlet or something? 6' is barely above average.

I don't think everyone will choose to be white. Dark skin doesn't inherently look bad, it's just that the people who have it often do.

fast muscle gains won't be desired either. People who gain muscle quickly have shittier and more fluid-filled muscles.

this.
one genetic fuckup away from mass outbreak.

If you create someone genetically superior to you wouldn't that make you inferior?

Wouldn't the next generation of superior beings do a better job and make someone superior to themselves?

When does it end?

Genetic engineering itself is just a tool. One most people will misuse, probably.

If you're dumb and have poor taste you'll probably make a kid with a 150 IQ and still never properly educate it, so it'll just be a kid with a lot of wasted potential. If anything, it'll accelerate class divide more than anything else.

Does that mean I want my kid to be just as shit as I am? No. But there's a lot of things to consider when you can now be directly responsible for the minutae of your child's genetic code. I'd focus on longevity and intellect over muh 6'9 Chad.

Moreover, nature is more effecient at deciding these things than we are. Not to say with proper research and foresight we can't do something right, but a majority of the world would try designing their kids to fit the beauty standards of the time, and that might not be the best direction to head from an evolutionary standpoint.

>Moreover, nature is more effecient at deciding these things than we are.
It probably isn't. The thing is just that humans are heavily biased. We don't know shit about how humans work genetically. We have identified some genes that probably do something, but especially things we actually want are not within our capabilities of deciding. Stuff like intelligence, good looks, a nice body and self-discipline are incredibly complicated things that aren't changed with a single mutation. The thing is, DNA isn't a designed code. It isn't meant to be edited, it is meant to be iterated and selected over millions of generations. We can't reproduce that. By the time we tweaked a few genes and realized that changing one thing fucks up another, nature has already tried countless other combinations.

When we can upload our minds into the cloud

Metal>Flesh

It's not how GOD made u
>proceeds to pet purebred chihuahua and eat beef

>Uploading

So you want to die and have a duplicate of you take your place.

physical conversion is the only possible way we can maintain our individuality by transerring between biological and mechanical selves.

>>nature is more efficient
>It probably isn't
Such unbelievable hubris.

Funny how none of the people arguing in favour of eugenics would actually fall into the elite group.

>implying I want to have kids

If it's done properly, it won't feel like you died at all.

By "properly" I mean gradually. You and your duplicate should remain "conjoined" for as long as possible, so that you are aware of whatever the duplicate is aware of. This will essentially feel as if you were both one, unbroken person. Rather than each of you feeling like distinct people, you will instead feel as if your mind had been somehow "extended". Then, your physical body will gradually die, which necessarily must happen anyway. Your duplicate will still feel like "you" after this happens. This is probably the easiest way to attain immortality. Bolstering our feeble physical bodies so that they don't deteriorate appears to be a much more difficult task.

What makes you think you'll perceive the world through the machine?