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Will Genetic Engineering Kill Us?
Kaz Riprock writes "Mark Baard, author of this Wired article was a recent attendee at The Future of Human Nature symposium (that I helped organize). The talks were held at Boston University through the Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future. A high profile assemblage of well-known thinkers, such as Steven Pinker, Lee Silver, and Marvin Minsky, were invited to speak at the 3 day conference to examine what 'Human Nature' would be like in 50-200 years.
While the article describes a good amount of the 'doom and gloom' which was presented and discussed, it does not quite capture the upside to our potential future aims. One example from the conference was the talk by Christine Peterson, head of The Foresight Institute, on the future use of nanotechnology to better the human condition."
This is the same line of thinking that many people have followed
for the last century. Every new technology has been heralded
with predictions of doom and gloom. The 70's and 80's produced
volumes of work predicting robots subjugating mankind to their
will. As we progress with work on AI we find we are still a
long way from that type of outcome.
The stories are too many to recount all of them, but a quick
jaunt through history shows that people are resistant to
change. They are slow to adopt technologies that change their
world view, and they often react violently if that change will
alter their religious view of the Universe. As an example look
at the debate still raging over evolution.
That isn't to say we shouldn't be careful of new technologies
and put good safeguards in place, however I for one am tired of
overly alarmist predictions of every new technology. It would
be nice to see some beautiful predictions of how the future
might be better with the technology.
Maybe with Genetic Engineering we'll be able to eliminate the
stupid gene. (That statement may set off a
firestorm.)
Doug Tolton
"The destruction of a value which is, will not bring value to that which isn't." -John Galt
This thing reminds me of an interview with Steven Spielberg when the "back to the future" movies came out in the 80's. He said that it's really easy to write about an apocolyptic future, but hard work to imagine a happy world in the future.
Maybe it's because we tend to idealize the past and forget about the horrible aspects of life 50-200 years ago. Maybe this sets a trend line where the past was great, the present is not as good, so the future must be hellish if we extrapolate far enough.
jeff