Sociological problems with Transhumanist arguments for genetic engineering

[sqbr]

attentive linked me Transhumanism and the Limits of Democracy by Ronald Bailey and reading it I had so many things I wanted to complain to the author about I decided to write them down. I wrote this ages ago, I'm posting it now because I got inspired to write another post riffing on the same ideas.

I have very little patience for Transhumanists on the whole, they tend too much towards capitalist libertarian bootstrap myths which seem to inevitably contain the belief that the poor deserve what they get. But sometimes it's cathartic to enumerate why someone I disagree with is wrong :)

I have less of a problem with the first half or so on the tension between democracy and minority rights, which is what attentive was referring to, and it makes for somewhat interesting reading.

But then the author argues that the state should have no say in who gets to have children, or how much control they have over how those children turn out. On the first point I quite agree. But I think the second argument concentrates too much on the individual effects of "improvements" and not enough on the larger scale.

Note: he doesn't talk about major changes, and so neither will I. I think it's worth just looking at the ethical issues around minor tweaking first.

I think the argument that children would not actually mind being born free of disease or with slightly better intelligence etc is fairly sound, though I have a feeling there's more to it than he says (this is an issue I'm still feeling my way around) I liked the point that from the child's perspective having your genes screened for a given defect is no different than having surgery to correct it in the womb, and noone objects to that. I also think he's right that having your genes tweaked in this fairly minor way doesn't take away your free will any more than random chance genetics do (though as with clones, I think the expectation that you will follow a preselected blueprint might cause issues)

But: Genetic variation relies on randomness. Any individual example of minor genetic tweaking doesn't stand out from the noise, but if it happens a lot then the overall shape of the noise will change and this could have huge effects on society.

I think he misses the (or at least a) point of CS Lewis's objection: yes, from a personal perspective, having your IQ(*) shifted up 20 Points on purpose isn't any different than having it happen by accident. But if for example all the parents of a given generation decide to make their kids 20 IQ points smarter then the following generation has no control over the fact that they are, overall, significantly smarter than your average generation of kids. Maybe society needs a certain proportion of the population to be below average intelligence to function smoothly.

In the Selfish Gene there's some stuff about Game Theory and the complicated dynamics of personality types in a society. Say personality type A is the "best" thing to be in the current mix of phenotypes. Who's to say that if the proportion of type A personalities gets too high, the whole society won't shift out of it's current equilibrium into something totally different (and possibly bad). And maybe in this new equilibrium being a Type A is bad. (See Type A= ambitious leader)

To give a really coarse grained example, look at China: thanks to a whole mess of reasons which go beyond the scope of this post, many parents have chosen to have boys instead of girls. There's nothing significant about any individual instance of having a boy instead of a girl, but the overall trend means there's a huge gender disparity now which is having effects on Chinese society².

Beyond all that there's also the fact that I really don't believe that we can tell which genes will or will not be useful in the future. We don't want to turn into some designer crop monoculture. Of course I wouldn't argue for keeping the gene for cystic fibrosis at it's current prevalance just for some possible future benefit to humanity³, but things could theoretically be taken too far in the opposite direction.

But suppose that it's not EVERYONE who gets the treatment. Well, that has it's own problems.

I am simply amused at the sheer naiveté of:

The enhancements that are likely to be available in the relatively near term to people now living will be pharmacological—pills and shots to increase strength, lighten moods, and improve memory. Consequently, such interventions could be distributed to nearly everybody who wanted them.

Yes, because that's certainly how medical advances get distributed now.

The way I see it, it is already the case that the children of the rich and powerful tend to end up more rich and powerful on average. If the rich and powerful are able to have "better" children they will then have two advantages over everyone else, cementing their role as the next generation of rich and powerful. Yet he doesn't even seem to recognise this as a problem, all he worries about is the danger of slavery and genocide, and then dismisses them as problems which simply won't happen in a sufficiently liberal society because of basic human decency and enlightened philosophy.

Do we live in the same world? What's his example of a rational decent society that doesn't kill or oppress innocent people based on irrational bias..America? It is to laugh. I guess you could argue that overall "society" has tended to progress to being less oppressive (though the gap between rich and poor is larger now than it used to be) but I'm really not convinced that the rate of this "progress" will outstrip our ability to control genetics fast enough to prevent further and more entrenched stratification of society. Also see: Gatacca.

So. I'm not arguing that all genetic enhancements should be banned, or that they couldn't improve society. I agree that any attempt to control them could very easily go down the oh-so-slippery state-control-of-reproduction road. But giving people free reign to do whatever the hell they like could have some pretty serious negative effects too. What I'm saying is that deciding between these options is hard, and shouldn't be controlled by too much starry-eyed idealist dogma.

1)And yes, LOL at IQ being something that objective
2)I have no idea how accurate it is, but a brief google found China's future: a nation of single men?.
3)There are other arguments for keeping those genes around, I think along the lines that stopping any children with that illness being born is a form of disablism. But I must admit that I don't entirely understand how that's different from saying that discouraging pregnant women from drinking is prejudiced against children with foetal alcohol syndrome. I guess there's the fact that you're aborting (or choosing not to implant) the disabled embryo rather than stopping an able bodied embryo from becoming disabled. Anyway, I'm willing to be persuaded on this point, but it doesn't change the fact that I think preserving genetic diversity is not by itself enough reason to force people to have "bad" genes.

Comments

[hl]

This is an awesome discussion. Awesome in the sense that one can come with a very clear idea of what one thinks and end up thinking: this is fucking difficult to think about.

Yes, at your third footnote. But at the same time, I don't think it's the children that get the shaft then (the children that would've had the disease don't exist, and the ones that wouldn't, well... wouldn't mind much being born, don't they?) I think the actual danger is towards:

• The mothers having those embryos. There should really be some sort of assurance this would be their choice.


• People living now with those genetic differences. I don't think I'm the only one to think that it could bring a great danger to those people if their right to exist would be at least superficially put into question.

I think the discussion about the consequences of negating the mechanism that works by genetic diversity is a highly theoretical one. If we have enough control to change any genes at will, then I really don't see how we couldn't be better at deciding how humanity needs to be than just chance. Nature is not wise in my book--it's just that we don't see all the rejects. And yes, humanity/scientists will probably make a lot of mistakes... don't see how that's any different to just leaving it at random.

I am way more worried about the implications that would have on living people. What would it mean to have been an unscreened/unmodified embryo? And what when those people have medical troubles... wouldn't there be a even bigger danger of society going, 'You're not worth it?'

I think leaving anything to a capitalist society to decide is highly dangerous. It manages to screw the biggest portion of the people living in it, even when moved by supposedly democratic means.

[naraht]

I don't think I'm the only one to think that it could bring a great danger to those people if their right to exist would be at least superficially put into question.

Sad to say, society already went there a long time ago and I'm not talking about Nazi Germany specifically. Their right to exist is *already* in question.

[hl]

What do you mean?

[hl]

Er, I cannot edit, and I realize my question is unclear. I do know about the eugenic movements in other countries, but I was not aware of any that survived today--my question refers to that.

[hl]

Aaaand, I've just thought of what you mean. You mean the screening that already happens, right?

My mind was more on cancer/Alzheimer/heart problems, I must confess, which is my family's trinity.

[sqbr]

True.

And thinking about it, if all our effort goes into cure/prevention it does mean we can avoid creating a space for people whose needs differ greatly from the norm.

[sqbr]

The mothers having those embryos. There should really be some sort of assurance this would be their choice.

Yes. Definitely.

People living now with those genetic differences. I don't think I'm the only one to think that it could bring a great danger to those people if their right to exist would be at least superficially put into question.

True, though I think that's an issue with all medical advances that prevent a previously common illness (which is not to say it's not also specifically an issue here) And I guess.. it's important not to approach disability and difference entirely in terms of cure/prevention, but also in terms of creating a world which has space for people who are and will always be different/ill.

[aris_tgd]

Heh, I call myself a transhumanist, but I'm not exactly involved with the "community." I think I'd probably find most of them a bunch of entitled asshats.

I think there's always a danger of letting people experiment on their offspring--and that's what these are, experiments. If we assume that the ability to make genetic tweaks is distributed equally across society, then the problem becomes that it is really hard to slap the brakes on once you get going. I would argue for more regulation rather than less just because while socially it's hard to get rid of regulation of things (See: age of drinking in America,) it's much, much harder to undo the damage done by a generation of bad science. See: Global climate change. I mean, let's face it, it's a luxury. I'm all for more luxury, but I think it's better to have procedures for an undo in place.

Which doesn't even get INTO the way that that's already assuming something that will not be true--that genetic enhancement will be equally available to the entire population. It won't. As you said, it'll wind up being a rich person's privilege--and it'll end up strengthening the class divide. Even if we aren't talking things like "intelligence strengthening", even screening for, say, all hereditary diseases/cancers and mental illnesses does a HUGE amount for your health insurance. So for just that reason alone, curtailing it is necessary to prevent a whole series of other social problems.

Though allowing the rich to make all the expensive genetic mistakes does have an aura of 1930s pulp fiction to it.

[sqbr]

Oh good point about the experimental nature.

Though allowing the rich to make all the expensive genetic mistakes does have an aura of 1930s pulp fiction to it.

Or some strange fantasy setting with a strange mad aristocracy with disturbing powers :)

re. expensive genetic mistakes

[susanreads]

(The people with the greatly extended lifespans in the future-world in my head) are the descendants of the survivors of the children of (the rich people and their tame scientists who thought this was a good idea).

Re: re. expensive genetic mistakes

[sqbr]

Hmm. I can see that.

[naraht]

I think the argument that children would not actually mind being born free of disease or with slightly better intelligence etc is fairly sound, though I have a feeling there's more to it than he says (this is an issue I'm still feeling my way around).

I can't help wondering whether children would mind being born right-handed rather than left-handed, or straight rather than gay, or white rather than non-white. All of these things would certainly make their lives easier (she said provocatively rather than seriously).

Although I'm not terribly informed on these things, it seems to me that you're prejudging the issue rather by framing it as one of being "free of disease." Who could object to that? But disease will always be in the eye of the beholder and I don't think that painting all people with genetic conditions as inherently and permanently "diseased" is particularly helpful, either now or in the hypothetical future where we have the technology to do a different sort of eugenics than we've done in the past.

[sqbr]

That's a very good point, and I have seriously pondered the "What if people could choose the gender/sexuality/handedness etc of their children" problem before yet managed to totally elide it in my post. Hmm. I think what I meant (but didn't say) was that I was restricting my argument to unambiguously positive changes to DNA since even when you do that the argument he gives is bogus. But (a)I didn't say that and (b) There ARE no unambiguously positive changes to DNA (and my language/framing makes it all seem much more unambiguous than it is).

I think my particular disability makes it harder for me to understand this sort of thing: it's a horrible inconvenience which I was happy without for the first 20ish years of my life and would get rid of in a second. Same with my one notable congenital fault eg bad eyesight.

But I imagine being "fixed" to no longer be short, or pale (very maladaptive in Australia!) or female and...yeah. HMM.

[ex_peasant441]

I once heard of a situation where deaf parents did not want their deaf children given cochlear implants since it would be performing intrusive surgery on a healthy child that would then cut the child off from its natural inheritance of the deaf culture. Needless to say, the hearing grandparents were distraught.

[sqbr]

Apparently the other thing with cochlear implants is they don't give very good hearing, so the choice is between being fully fluent in sign language and "normal" in Deaf culture, or poorly fluent in spoken language and still fairly disabled in hearing culture (afaict the necessary training to use a cochlear implant interferes with the ability to learn sign language)

[attentive]

Hey, would you mind linking me to our original discussion of this article? I want to check if what I thought about it second time around matches up at all with my first pass commentary.

[sqbr]

I thought "That'll be easy, it was one of my first proper posts so I'll just go back the beginning" then I remembered that I copied over all my lj entries going back to 2006...

But I found it! http://sqbr.dreamwidth.org/231668.html?thread=3309812#ljcmt3309812

I've studied too much genetics to be much good here :-)

[aquaeri]

I have less and less respect for transhumanists because they seem to have a very simplistic idea of what "human" is. And absolutely no powers of observation of the current real world.

So, yes, there are no "good" genes. We know a relatively small number of specific mutations that increase your risk of cancer, or cognitive impairment. As I understand it, we don't know any genes that reduce your risk of cancer or increase your cognitive ability. We've now known the complete human genome for almost 10 years, and if anything, we now know less about how that encodes a human being (in the sense that while we have learnt some things, we've also become aware of large swathes of stuff we realise we don't know anything about that we didn't know we'd need to know about).

I'm completely confused why having one's genes tweaked would affect free will in any way. But I'm less and less clear on what free will is, and I'm starting to suspect it's like the soul, and doesn't actually exist.

I think I otherwise completely agree with you - monoculture is generally a bad thing, despite how much we seem to like it, and yes of course anything like this is just going to increase the rich/poor (or other privileged/not) divide.

Re: I've studied too much genetics to be much good here :-)

[sqbr]

Yeah my understanding of genetics is pretty crap :) I decided to not bother poking at the assumptions they were making about the possibility of simple easy small "improvements" to genetics since that's not something I can poke at with much authority, and even if you accept that premise their argument is flawed.

I'm completely confused why having one's genes tweaked would affect free will in any way.

It does seem pretty bizarre an idea. They may have invented this as a straw man argument. Then again people have made some pretty stupid claims about clones.

Re: I've studied too much genetics to be much good here :-)

[aquaeri]

Oh yes, the word "clone" seems to bring out the magical thinking. Identical twins are clones, probably better than we'll ever achieve (because they also share uterine environment). And for better or worse, I happen to have a pair of identical twins in my immediate social circle who may look alike, but have noticeably different personalities, to the point that while their voices fundamentally are the same, the way they talk means I can instantly tell who is talking from intonation, attitude, etc. I mean, my sister and I are harder to distinguish vocally (and we don't look much alike).

Re: I've studied too much genetics to be much good here :-)

[sqbr]

*nods*

[attentive]

sqbr, you seem to be bent on exploring rather marginal claims about the potential negative consequences of transhumanism.

Your tentative statement, "maybe society needs a certain proportion of the population to be below average intelligence to function smoothly", is pure speculation. What is "society" in this proposition?

To me the problem of a society that can't accommodate ordinary people having high intelligence shouldn't be solved by limiting the intelligence of the people! To me it would point to a much deeper problem with social organisation.

Likewise when you sarcastically refer to the inequitable access to medical treatments that presently exists - "yes, because that's certainly how medical advances get distributed now" - you don't get all the way to an argument that an inequitable distribution of improved medical treatments is worse than the existing inequitable distribution of the treatments we have.

i.e. this post to me reads as justifiable suspicion with the notable absence of a "smoking gun". It's titled "Sociological Problems with Transhumanist Arguments" but the problems lie not in transhumanist arguments specifically, but in the societies with which the philosophy of transhumanism must relate.

I think perhaps there's a false distinction being drawn between research or technological change that is classified as "transhumanist" and general medical and prosthetic advances. Really they're all within the same ambit and perhaps the vast majority of the people conducting the research wouldn't self-identify as transhumanist.

Your arguments in this post don't sit well with me because they seem to suggest that in general, medical progress should be carefully evaluated and possibly regulated out of existence, because of its potential to destabilise society or increase social stratification. Or if they don't, it's because you regard some types of medical technology - the "transhumanist" types - as fundamentally politically and sociologically different from other types, in a way that you don't elaborate upon to my satisfaction.

i.e. I would agree that genetic medicine, for example, is fundamentally different from other types of medicine in a technical sense, but I don't agree that that difference maps homomorphically into the socio-political sphere. The boundaries of justice don't correspond with those of technology.

On the whole, though, I do agree with the proposition that transhumanists online tend to be dipwads, and I think the phrase "capitalist libertarian bootstrap myths" neatly summed up why they shit me.

That is all! Oh, except to say that I went back and read my earlier analysis of this article, and thought that I still more or less agreed with what I'd previously said :-)

[sqbr]

The problem with this post is that I'm not so much making a complete argument as arguing against some of their arguments.

The problem with replying to your comment is I can't remember what specific arguments I was trying to refute, and keeping the three ideas in my head simultaneously (their idea, my disagreement, your disagreement with that) is hurting my brain! So I will have a vague go and maybe look at it again when I'm not feeling so mentally drained.

So: I agree that there's no particular reason to think improving the average intelligence of society would be harmful, but I think I was arguing against them saying that it was inconceivable that it could have any negative effect. And, you know, it might. The danger of that possible negative effect is plausibly worth risking, but it is a risk.

And again: I'm not saying medical advance is bad. But they were saying that it was impossible that it could have any negative consequences, that it was obvious that it would trickle down, and they seemed not to acknowledge the likelihood of it being concentrated amongst the rich and powerful. Imo the way to fix that concentration is to make sure the tech is fairly distributed.

My problem is not with individual technologies, it's with these specific arguments in favour of those technologies. In fact I'd say we'd possibly agree on policy: while I think that there should be an automatic consideration for the possible consequences of any new technology before it's implemented, most of the negative consequences I brought up here should be dealt with by changing society, and maybe regulating but still using the tech, not banning it outright.

eg they seemed to me to be saying "The best and only important thing we need health wise is better technology, and there is no way better tech could have any negative consequences", and I strongly disagree with that, but that doesn't mean I think better technology is necessarily bad.

[attentive]

I see what you're saying. I think this line of argument works much better, as well, when coupled with another about the social opportunity cost of investment in technology and "progress".

[sqbr]

Hmm. Point.

[attentive]

Well, yeah, if everyone in the intelligentsia is training and trying to be a technocrat and build the better human being, they're obviously not focused on the difficult social problems.

Feeling particularly depressed about indigenous disadvantage today. And, of course, powerless. Stupid country!

[sqbr]

Yeah it's pretty dispiriting. And the more I learn about what people actually working and living in Aboriginal communities think is the best thing to do the more I realise how wrongheaded public policy and opinion is :(

[attentive]

Just got back from Darwin myself and although I didn't see much, three things jumped out:

- lots of indigenous people compared to Perth
- lots of indigenous people in different walks of life with different levels of disadvantage
- the smallness of the place, its saturation in general (housing and rent are WAY more expensive than Perth which indicates to me there are bottlenecks in building new homes) and the consequent difficulties with infrastructure and labour for any public works project such as the NT housing scheme

[sqbr]

*nods*

Even just analysing the records of people from remote aboriginal communities it was clear that the bureaucracy just isn't designed to cope with their context eg people moving across state lines regularly with minimal contact with the government machine means it's very hard to keep track of stuff like electoral enrollment and medical records, or even birth dates. So we don't even know how many people there are needing the resources.