The general idea in bio-remediation is that the bacteria consumes complex compounds that are diffused over a wide area. The result is that either the bacterium releases its "waste" by-products of metabolism as (for example) a gas or else accumulates the radioactive elements within itself. In the first scenario, the gas might either be harvested in a fermentation/growth chamber or else just allowed to blow off into the atmosphere. In the second I'm not sure what the plan would be.
Who are you to make such demands ? I'm part of the/. community. When the signal/noise ration becomes too high I am affected by that. I rely on fellow-moderators to moderate UP things worth reading. If you _seriously_ believe that this is informative then you are easily satisfied Anonymous Coward. Regards, Crush ps. say "hi" to "the guys in the office" and the aliens at Roswell for me.
I think you were trying to make the point that medieval cow grazing commons did not fail for this reason. Yes. Hardin was referring to a fictional historical construct "the tragedy of the commons" which occured for exactly the opposite reasons that he implied. What is interesting is that the overfishing of the oceans has been _not_ through the individual competition of fishermen behaving irrationally causing destruction of a resource - rather (and here I can really only talk with respect to the collapse of the fisheries based around the Atlantic seaboard of Canada) it has occured through centralized mismanagement. The Canadian DFO ( dept. of fisheries and oceans) instituted a Single Transferable Quota system which opened up the fishing ground to speculation and trading of these licenses. This led to an aggregation of licenses in the hands of a few large fishing companies. Younger fisherfolk are now to all intents and purposes unable to attain a STQ and work as hired hands for these companies. The larger companies in pursuit of a larger profit employ environmentally destructive fishing methods - dragging instead of line-fishing - in order to be able to return a good profit for their owners. So, my point, Hardin was telling an implicit fib with that phrase. It is frequently cited as though it were fact, often to bolster the argument that humans are incable of rational behaviour individually. It is interesting that at least one example from the opposite corner indicates that the reverse can be true: large bureaucracies that don't allow individual action can result in ludicrous self-defeating outcomes. Anyway, glad you liked the paper.
And here's why: if any of you had read the original link to this story you would see that there is NO NEW INFORMATION in this long piece! My assumption reading this particular "anonymous posting" is that it is someone that read the original article and is trying to spice up his perspective by being a "horse's mouth". Moderator, please justify why this score? Did you read the original article - if so tell me exactly what new information there is in this dubious posting.
What's going on right now with all these goddamn awful stupid inane patents, trademarks and senseless bullshit is not the result of capitalism No? Silly me, I thought we were living in a capitalist system. Dang. Better change my perspective, this must be communism. I don't like it. It allows people with too much money and power to completely control all the resources. Then they write the laws and hire the people that enforce the laws to stop me changing things, and because I don't have lots of money there is not much I can do about it. That must be the totalitarian part of communism that I've heard so much about. This communism sucks! It results in _property_ being held up to be good against all other ideals. This must be the inhuman part of communism I've heard about. I'll join you in searching for the capitalism that is supposed to protect rights, not destroy them or, maybe that's the propaganda part of communism?
Sorry if this is slightly offtopic but I couldn't resist. It is not intended to try and invalidate the point that you were making. The tragedy of the commons is often assumed to be a factual/historical description of how a common resource (the mediaeval commons) was shared in a free-for-all manner which eventually led to its own destruction. Not true. The term was introduced in a 1968 Science article (Science 162:1243-8) about population growth. He concluded that "Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all". This assumption of his, that the commons was a free-for-all, is untrue. In fact the commons and the different rights of grazing, pasturing, turfcutting etc were administered by the lord of the manor who enforced a strict set of rules. The commons - and here's the interesting bit for OSS - were eventually destroyed when the aristocracy took over large parts of them (the land enclosures). See any parallel?
I guess that is my point. Intent really isn't all that interesting! The intent of coporate lawyers may not be to rein-in the pace of development, the intent of BillG may not be to create an unpleasant computing environment. Their intent is as you say, and as I pointed out, to achieve X [fame,money,excitement}. To want to get one of these is not evil or bad. But the effect of one's actions in attempting this can be just that: bad (I agree that evil is too strong a word). So, the _intent_ of the patent lawyers may even be good, but I don't count that, I only count the _effect_ that their _behaviour_ has. Similarly, to invert the argument, do you really consider it a mitigating circumstance when someone hurts you with the only motive that they were making money from it? Which leads to your last point: would you rather be assaulted by a mugger then by a loony? Personally I would be a lot more upset by the mugger.
These people aren't evil or anything, they're just interested in making tons of cash. Sort of damning them with faint praise, isn't it? I wonder how many awful people there are about whom you could say "they aren't evil they're just interested in X". Substitute money, power, status, excitement, etc for X. The problem isn't in their all too human desire for any of these things but in the effect they have on others. As far as changing the system goes (and I agree that the whole thing is a problem and needs to be replaced rather than tinkered with) you only need money if you're trying to play the same game. Aren't people like RMS an example of what you can do if you really are motivated? I heard the "money to change the system line" from ESR in the last communication from him on/. but which of them has made a _huge_ difference? I think RMS has shifted a part of the system and made a much larger difference through his intellectual honesty (and bloody-minded commitment to his views) than he could have if he'd started to try and become some sort of lobbyist.
Well, there is a link on the MIT page. If it is a hoax then it's in incredibly bad taste: if you go to the Leonardo Finance page you'll see that these are very nice people. I quote: Thirty of them are graduates of the Stanford Business School in California. and furthermore they have high aims: The "shareholder-experts" are free and independent, but they all share the same values : market economy, belief in the individual, creativity and innovation. Leonardo Finance consequently constitutes a formidable source of ideas, capital, competence and contacts, and thus represents one of the principal European centers of expertise dedicated to the creation of wealth. Compare that to the organization at MIT which: serves the international art community by providing a channel of communication for artists and others interested in the arts, with an emphasis on artists who use science and developing technologies in their work. Where do they think the money comes from?
police organizations acting subservient to business interests When have they ever done anything else? One rarely sees the police being used to control corporations. Yes, they could be, but the history of police intervention has usually been that they are in the pocket of the rich and powerful, used to preserve "stability" (read status quo). It's painful to watch it happening in each new forum though. There is a sort of "aggressor's advantage' in these situations - unless one is constantly on the attack, constantly assuming an adversarial situation, then the initiative falls to the most bloody minded - in this case some non-productive money-masturbators.
Is there any sanity at all in the French goons attempting to get on-line from the widow's house? It seems an incredibly weird thing to do - what did they think it would prove? However, at a more general level I am interested to know what all those/. readers who defend the "defensive patenting" and the "it'll all fall out OK due to the 'invisible hand'" schools of thought have to say about it. Surely from those perspectives this is just a company (which is the driving force behind technology) securing a valued-property so that the original Leonardo(non-TM) users cannot exploit it?
Whilst sharing your skepticism and suspicion I think we should remember that there is a lot more to Free Software than a couple of personalities, respected though they are. The GPL preserves the potential for a motivated _community_ to build on its shared intellectual capital. Even if there were a de facto defection of some of our stars then there is, I think, a sufficient number of us to carry on. I'm not sure either that Perens _is_ defecting - if venture capital is attracted to support GPL'ed software then that's great. Or is it just going to be "runs on Linux" ? Regards, crush
Good point. I think that this will probably be the main function and usefulness of whatever this "organism" is: a testbed for inserting new genes or different control elements. It would be nice for investigating potential new combinations of genes in operons. It's high-falutin' to start talking about "what is life" and only approachable through philosophy.
Interestingly the organism that they are claiming contains the "minimal set" of genes needed for life is not "free-living". This is of note because it means that it is entirely possible that the minimal set would only allow an organism to function if it were in an environment which already provided many of the complex biochemical compounds needed for metabolism. So, what sort of claim is it to assert that they are creating life? Yes, it is life of a sort, but is it autonomous, free-living and independent?
Well, the effect of your own post is slightly at odds with your intention then! You rightly ask us to consider as parallels: i.the researching of the possibility of nuclear fission and the production of nuclear weapons ii. the mapping and sequencing of a human genome and the development of technologies that alter human genomes. Yes indeed! Let us look at the number of succesful nuclear programs in the world. we recently added Pakistan to the list. There is no reason to believe that it will stop there. International efforts to curb nuclear proliferation are notably unsuccesful and the Prisoner's Dilemma logic of international strategic relations indicates that it will continue to be so. Your post strikes me as irritating because of its complacency. All the fuss and the brou-haha being made are because people are skeptical that any new opportunity will necessarily be used to their benefit. The emotional expression of this is handily summed-up in the phrase "Frankenstein's monster" - the creation of a complacent dabbler that did not attempt to worry about the ramifications. To continue your analogy - place yourself pre-nuclear weapons. If your logic is to be consistent then, in that situation, you must aver that , yes, there may be a down-side to nuclear fission, however there is an upside too. Tell it to the Japanese that died in Hiroshima. Tell it to the U.S. Dept. of Energy that is spending huge amounts of our money trying to deal with contaminated soil. The media may be using hyperbole, grabbing attention, asking "what is the worst case". What are you doing? It seems to me that you are saying calm down, don't worry, trust the companies and the scientists to make the right decision for you. Yet, if you question many scientists they will distance themselves from ethical questions insisting that they focus on technical questions within the parameters allowed by society. So - in my opinion the sensation and hyperbole are justified at the very least by your very own analogy. I am glad that people are debating it. I am glad that Katz raised the issue. I am glad that there are so many posts on slashdot (for example an excellent one by "jd") which raises the issues of preserving variability. Speaking for myself I am going to continue reading about this stuff so that I can see if my attitudes and opinions are justified. I am stimulated by all the conversation. I would have liked your post more if _you_ had presented some _information_ with which to make up our minds rather than bemoaning debate. The point that this is only a first step on the road to hell is if not semantic then at least pedantic. We are asking do we want to go to hell, you are saying that we're just sitting on the doorstep. Regards, Crush
Sorry I haven't had time to respond until now. To take your first point first:
"'..the fact that humanity has existed as long as it has is pretty good proof[that most civilizations use technology/resources for "net good"]'
Well the problem that I see with that is that mere survival of the species is not the same thing as the members of the species enjoying their lives. Think of the number of possible awful societal organizations that you could postulate which would result in the mere survival of humans yet visit the individual people in the society with pain, hunger and hopelessness. If you doubt that this has been the lot of a huge proportion of the people that live and have ever lived then I suggest that we start with an examination of the present. To consider the most extreme example there are approximately 20 million child-slaves/bonded labourers in the world. Luckily they are a small proportion of the population and most of their fellows are lucky enough to be able to work at meaningful jobs that provide them with enough sustenance to die at the average age of 42 (if male). Yes, a short life, yet full of satisfaction no doubt. And, yes, I am sure they are very grateful to the magic of the free-market that allows them to slave for the crypto-imperialist country you live in so that you can have cheap consumer trinkets.
Your second point ignores the reality of the capitalist economy that we live in and thus leads you to the erroneous conclusion that '...monopoly issues have nothing to do with genetic engineering...". If you accept that a new technology creates new opportunities and problems then it is a short step to realizing that all the battles fought in the past over what society accepts can be done to/with/for/on individual citizens have to be fought all over again. There is a fundamentally antagonistic relationship between businesses and society. Businesses naturally look after their own interests, pursuit of their own interests is the sole criterion by which they are and should be run (unless you have some weird Victorian moralism which conflates what is right for business being right for the country). It is up to the citizens to assert their rights against this firm and steady pressure which mechanically challenges the existing social order. The specific new challenge introduced by genetic engineering that ties it uniquely to monopoly issues is that it was not possible technically to achieve monopoly in this area until now. So, the mode of production affects the societal superstructure.
Thirdly, the problem with uniform livestock is this: the "optimally efficient steer" is optimal only in the specific environment that it has been optimized for. The loss and removal of genetic variation is of serious concern for the point you made earlier - the long-term survival of a species. New environmental challenges - and I would like to emphasize that this includes obvious factors such as temperature, UV-level and less obvious ones such as the emergence of new infectious diseases - are more likely to seriously affect the species overall if all the genotypes are identical. Species, whether cows, corn or Californians need genetic variablity to rise to new challenges. Further, when the optimization is being done by a company that exists in a capitalist society that allows them to maximize profit at the expense of just about everything else, well, what gets affected is usually our environment. Yes, in your ideal utopia this would be taken into account. However in this world it is not. Any attempts to do this recently have been resisted strongly and under the rules being negotiated at the WTO it would be illegal to attempt to ban imports of for example the steel produced by slave labour in Brazil from rain-forest charcoal (whether one disliked the destruction of them darned rain-forests or slavery or both).
So, in summary, in this world the advent of new technologies mean that we have to debate them. No, I am not ANTI-genetic engineering or ANTI-technology. I am however very definitely against certain uses of technology. The naive championing of technology as intrinsically good is as meaningless as the naive rejection of it as inherently bad. Regards, Crush
"...is there really any solid basis for these?" Yes. The most applied and widespread face of genetic engineering so far has been crop manipulation. The factual and solid result of this has been a concentration of power and market monopoly in the hands of one company: Monsanto. What this discussion is about is an attempt to forsee dangers and avoid them. Hope that starts to help you make an informed decision. Regards, Crush.
I think you start out a little too emphatically in this post by claiming that cross-cultural preferences are genetically determined. Your later modification of this statement to "can't assume that there's no genetic determination" is more accurate. I can think of at least one explanation of why there would be cross-cultural similarities in preference that are yet not genetically determined: human cultures are not significantly different with regard to the nutritional challenges that they face. However, I suspect that it is probably correct that there are strong genetic determinants of these things. I merely object to the hyperbole of your opening statement. Regards, Crush
I agree with the general thrust of your argument, but isn't Katz asking "how many people will want to have retarded, cystic fibrosis sufferers" as offspring? Presumably not many. He hints that this may be bad because then we will have no-one to develop our finer feelings for. With regard to does everyone agree with what constitutes "beautiful" there have been several studies published over the last few years that indicate that there are widely accepted facial proportions that hold cross-culturally. Admittedly this is offset by new studies on body-morphology which would seem to indicate that verious indigenes would consider our "ideal" of thin women rather strange.
All those things humans have generally been pretty good at maintaining all these years.
Hmmm. Rather a whig view of history there - not to mention that the manipulation of the very stuff of humanity is possibly a little more dramatic and intrusive than the conveyer-belts. What evidence is there that most people and civilizations use anything for "net-good" purposes? Take your friend the production-line. Its major use is the untrammeled production of excess consumer goods whose unchecked consumption is causing us a lot of environmental grief. Yes, the solution to these problems is "Law! Order! Morality!" but the implementation of these laudable words leaves much to be desired. Perhaps you believe that the unchecked pursuit of profit through "free-trade" will magically result in the "invisible hand" arranging our world so that these ideals precipitate out somehow. I don't. I believe that at this moment we are far from democracy and far from morality. Katz is right to worry. Lest you scoff, consider the major applications of genetic engineering so far: uniform livestock (yes I know that old-fashioned breeding was an attempt at this) to facilitate that production line of yours and the domination of plant foodstuffs by one large undemocratic, unmoral company. They at least are ordered! Welcome to the new law!
Just out of interest, when you say the maximum tax rate is 50-60% is that on a top portion of income? That is to say the first US$ 15,000 would be untaxed, the next $10,000 taxed at 30% and so on? Regards, Crush
Slashdot Mirror
The general idea in bio-remediation is that the bacteria consumes complex compounds that are diffused over a wide area. The result is that either the bacterium releases its "waste" by-products of metabolism as (for example) a gas or else accumulates the radioactive elements within itself. In the first scenario, the gas might either be harvested in a fermentation/growth chamber or else just allowed to blow off into the atmosphere. In the second I'm not sure what the plan would be.
Who are you to make such demands ? I'm part of the /. community. When the signal/noise ration becomes too high I am affected by that. I rely on fellow-moderators to moderate UP things worth reading. If you _seriously_ believe that this is informative then you are easily satisfied Anonymous Coward. Regards, Crush ps. say "hi" to "the guys in the office" and the aliens at Roswell for me.
I think you were trying to make the point that medieval cow grazing commons did not fail for this reason. Yes. Hardin was referring to a fictional historical construct "the tragedy of the commons" which occured for exactly the opposite reasons that he implied. What is interesting is that the overfishing of the oceans has been _not_ through the individual competition of fishermen behaving irrationally causing destruction of a resource - rather (and here I can really only talk with respect to the collapse of the fisheries based around the Atlantic seaboard of Canada) it has occured through centralized mismanagement. The Canadian DFO ( dept. of fisheries and oceans) instituted a Single Transferable Quota system which opened up the fishing ground to speculation and trading of these licenses. This led to an aggregation of licenses in the hands of a few large fishing companies. Younger fisherfolk are now to all intents and purposes unable to attain a STQ and work as hired hands for these companies. The larger companies in pursuit of a larger profit employ environmentally destructive fishing methods - dragging instead of line-fishing - in order to be able to return a good profit for their owners. So, my point, Hardin was telling an implicit fib with that phrase. It is frequently cited as though it were fact, often to bolster the argument that humans are incable of rational behaviour individually. It is interesting that at least one example from the opposite corner indicates that the reverse can be true: large bureaucracies that don't allow individual action can result in ludicrous self-defeating outcomes. Anyway, glad you liked the paper.
And here's why: if any of you had read the original link to this story you would see that there is NO NEW INFORMATION in this long piece! My assumption reading this particular "anonymous posting" is that it is someone that read the original article and is trying to spice up his perspective by being a "horse's mouth". Moderator, please justify why this score? Did you read the original article - if so tell me exactly what new information there is in this dubious posting.
What's going on right now with all these goddamn awful stupid inane patents, trademarks and senseless bullshit is not the result of capitalism No? Silly me, I thought we were living in a capitalist system. Dang. Better change my perspective, this must be communism. I don't like it. It allows people with too much money and power to completely control all the resources. Then they write the laws and hire the people that enforce the laws to stop me changing things, and because I don't have lots of money there is not much I can do about it. That must be the totalitarian part of communism that I've heard so much about. This communism sucks! It results in _property_ being held up to be good against all other ideals. This must be the inhuman part of communism I've heard about. I'll join you in searching for the capitalism that is supposed to protect rights, not destroy them or, maybe that's the propaganda part of communism?
sorry I forgot to mention the author!
Sorry if this is slightly offtopic but I couldn't resist. It is not intended to try and invalidate the point that you were making. The tragedy of the commons is often assumed to be a factual/historical description of how a common resource (the mediaeval commons) was shared in a free-for-all manner which eventually led to its own destruction. Not true. The term was introduced in a 1968 Science article (Science 162:1243-8) about population growth. He concluded that "Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all". This assumption of his, that the commons was a free-for-all, is untrue. In fact the commons and the different rights of grazing, pasturing, turfcutting etc were administered by the lord of the manor who enforced a strict set of rules. The commons - and here's the interesting bit for OSS - were eventually destroyed when the aristocracy took over large parts of them (the land enclosures). See any parallel?
read "than" for "then" in message above please.
I guess that is my point. Intent really isn't all that interesting! The intent of coporate lawyers may not be to rein-in the pace of development, the intent of BillG may not be to create an unpleasant computing environment. Their intent is as you say, and as I pointed out, to achieve X [fame,money,excitement}. To want to get one of these is not evil or bad. But the effect of one's actions in attempting this can be just that: bad (I agree that evil is too strong a word). So, the _intent_ of the patent lawyers may even be good, but I don't count that, I only count the _effect_ that their _behaviour_ has. Similarly, to invert the argument, do you really consider it a mitigating circumstance when someone hurts you with the only motive that they were making money from it? Which leads to your last point: would you rather be assaulted by a mugger then by a loony? Personally I would be a lot more upset by the mugger.
These people aren't evil or anything, they're just interested in making tons of cash. Sort of damning them with faint praise, isn't it? I wonder how many awful people there are about whom you could say "they aren't evil they're just interested in X". Substitute money, power, status, excitement, etc for X. The problem isn't in their all too human desire for any of these things but in the effect they have on others. As far as changing the system goes (and I agree that the whole thing is a problem and needs to be replaced rather than tinkered with) you only need money if you're trying to play the same game. Aren't people like RMS an example of what you can do if you really are motivated? I heard the "money to change the system line" from ESR in the last communication from him on /. but which of them has made a _huge_ difference? I think RMS has shifted a part of the system and made a much larger difference through his intellectual honesty (and bloody-minded commitment to his views) than he could have if he'd started to try and become some sort of lobbyist.
Well, there is a link on the MIT page. If it is a hoax then it's in incredibly bad taste: if you go to the Leonardo Finance page you'll see that these are very nice people. I quote: Thirty of them are graduates of the Stanford Business School in California. and furthermore they have high aims: The "shareholder-experts" are free and independent, but they all share the same values : market economy, belief in the individual, creativity and innovation. Leonardo Finance consequently constitutes a formidable source of ideas, capital, competence and contacts, and thus represents one of the principal European centers of expertise dedicated to the creation of wealth. Compare that to the organization at MIT which: serves the international art community by providing a channel of communication for artists and others interested in the arts, with an emphasis on artists who use science and developing technologies in their work. Where do they think the money comes from?
police organizations acting subservient to business interests When have they ever done anything else? One rarely sees the police being used to control corporations. Yes, they could be, but the history of police intervention has usually been that they are in the pocket of the rich and powerful, used to preserve "stability" (read status quo). It's painful to watch it happening in each new forum though. There is a sort of "aggressor's advantage' in these situations - unless one is constantly on the attack, constantly assuming an adversarial situation, then the initiative falls to the most bloody minded - in this case some non-productive money-masturbators.
Is there any sanity at all in the French goons attempting to get on-line from the widow's house? It seems an incredibly weird thing to do - what did they think it would prove? However, at a more general level I am interested to know what all those /. readers who defend the "defensive patenting" and the "it'll all fall out OK due to the 'invisible hand'" schools of thought have to say about it. Surely from those perspectives this is just a company (which is the driving force behind technology) securing a valued-property so that the original Leonardo(non-TM) users cannot exploit it?
Glasnost : the ideological toe-hold that preceded the invasion of the USSR by the Capitalist mafias. Is that really what you want to compare it to?
Whilst sharing your skepticism and suspicion I think we should remember that there is a lot more to Free Software than a couple of personalities, respected though they are. The GPL preserves the potential for a motivated _community_ to build on its shared intellectual capital. Even if there were a de facto defection of some of our stars then there is, I think, a sufficient number of us to carry on. I'm not sure either that Perens _is_ defecting - if venture capital is attracted to support GPL'ed software then that's great. Or is it just going to be "runs on Linux" ?
Regards,
crush
Agreed, however the non-free-living parasites lack many of the essential anabolic genes that closely related free-living ones have.
Good point. I think that this will probably be the main function and usefulness of whatever this "organism" is: a testbed for inserting new genes or different control elements. It would be nice for investigating potential new combinations of genes in operons. It's high-falutin' to start talking about "what is life" and only approachable through philosophy.
Interestingly the organism that they are claiming contains the "minimal set" of genes needed for life is not "free-living". This is of note because it means that it is entirely possible that the minimal set would only allow an organism to function if it were in an environment which already provided many of the complex biochemical compounds needed for metabolism. So, what sort of claim is it to assert that they are creating life? Yes, it is life of a sort, but is it autonomous, free-living and independent?
Well, the effect of your own post is slightly at odds with your intention then!
You rightly ask us to consider as parallels: i.the researching of the possibility of nuclear fission and the production of nuclear weapons
ii. the mapping and sequencing of a human genome and the development of technologies that alter human genomes.
Yes indeed! Let us look at the number of succesful nuclear programs in the world. we recently added Pakistan to the list. There is no reason to believe that it will stop there. International efforts to curb nuclear proliferation are notably unsuccesful and the Prisoner's Dilemma logic of international strategic relations indicates that it will continue to be so.
Your post strikes me as irritating because of its complacency. All the fuss and the brou-haha being made are because people are skeptical that any new opportunity will necessarily be used to their benefit. The emotional expression of this is handily summed-up in the phrase "Frankenstein's monster" - the creation of a complacent dabbler that did not attempt to worry about the ramifications.
To continue your analogy - place yourself pre-nuclear weapons. If your logic is to be consistent then, in that situation, you must aver that , yes, there may be a down-side to nuclear fission, however there is an upside too. Tell it to the Japanese that died in Hiroshima. Tell it to the U.S. Dept. of Energy that is spending huge amounts of our money trying to deal with contaminated soil.
The media may be using hyperbole, grabbing attention, asking "what is the worst case". What are you doing? It seems to me that you are saying calm down, don't worry, trust the companies and the scientists to make the right decision for you. Yet, if you question many scientists they will distance themselves from ethical questions insisting that they focus on technical questions within the parameters allowed by society. So - in my opinion the sensation and hyperbole are justified at the very least by your very own analogy. I am glad that people are debating it. I am glad that Katz raised the issue. I am glad that there are so many posts on slashdot (for example an excellent one by "jd") which raises the issues of preserving variability. Speaking for myself I am going to continue reading about this stuff so that I can see if my attitudes and opinions are justified. I am stimulated by all the conversation. I would have liked your post more if _you_ had presented some _information_ with which to make up our minds rather than bemoaning debate. The point that this is only a first step on the road to hell is if not semantic then at least pedantic. We are asking do we want to go to hell, you are saying that we're just sitting on the doorstep.
Regards,
Crush
Sorry I haven't had time to respond until now. To take your first point first:
"'..the fact that humanity has existed as long as it has is pretty good proof[that most civilizations use technology/resources for "net good"]'
Well the problem that I see with that is that mere survival of the species is not the same thing as the members of the species enjoying their lives. Think of the number of possible awful societal organizations that you could postulate which would result in the mere survival of humans yet visit the individual people in the society with pain, hunger and hopelessness. If you doubt that this has been the lot of a huge proportion of the people that live and have ever lived then I suggest that we start with an examination of the present. To consider the most extreme example there are approximately 20 million child-slaves/bonded labourers in the world. Luckily they are a small proportion of the population and most of their fellows are lucky enough to be able to work at meaningful jobs that provide them with enough sustenance to die at the average age of 42 (if male). Yes, a short life, yet full of satisfaction no doubt. And, yes, I am sure they are very grateful to the magic of the free-market that allows them to slave for the crypto-imperialist country you live in so that you can have cheap consumer trinkets.
Your second point ignores the reality of the capitalist economy that we live in and thus leads you to the erroneous conclusion that '...monopoly issues have nothing to do with genetic engineering...". If you accept that a new technology creates new opportunities and problems then it is a short step to realizing that all the battles fought in the past over what society accepts can be done to/with/for/on individual citizens have to be fought all over again. There is a fundamentally antagonistic relationship between businesses and society. Businesses naturally look after their own interests, pursuit of their own interests is the sole criterion by which they are and should be run (unless you have some weird Victorian moralism which conflates what is right for business being right for the country). It is up to the citizens to assert their rights against this firm and steady pressure which mechanically challenges the existing social order. The specific new challenge introduced by genetic engineering that ties it uniquely to monopoly issues is that it was not possible technically to achieve monopoly in this area until now. So, the mode of production affects the societal superstructure.
Thirdly, the problem with uniform livestock is this: the "optimally efficient steer" is optimal only in the specific environment that it has been optimized for. The loss and removal of genetic variation is of serious concern for the point you made earlier - the long-term survival of a species. New environmental challenges - and I would like to emphasize that this includes obvious factors such as temperature, UV-level and less obvious ones such as the emergence of new infectious diseases - are more likely to seriously affect the species overall if all the genotypes are identical. Species, whether cows, corn or Californians need genetic variablity to rise to new challenges. Further, when the optimization is being done by a company that exists in a capitalist society that allows them to maximize profit at the expense of just about everything else, well, what gets affected is usually our environment. Yes, in your ideal utopia this would be taken into account. However in this world it is not. Any attempts to do this recently have been resisted strongly and under the rules being negotiated at the WTO it would be illegal to attempt to ban imports of for example the steel produced by slave labour in Brazil from rain-forest charcoal (whether one disliked the destruction of them darned rain-forests or slavery or both).
So, in summary, in this world the advent of new technologies mean that we have to debate them. No, I am not ANTI-genetic engineering or ANTI-technology. I am however very definitely against certain uses of technology. The naive championing of technology as intrinsically good is as meaningless as the naive rejection of it as inherently bad.
Regards,
Crush
"...is there really any solid basis for these?"
Yes. The most applied and widespread face of genetic engineering so far has been crop manipulation. The factual and solid result of this has been a concentration of power and market monopoly in the hands of one company: Monsanto.
What this discussion is about is an attempt to forsee dangers and avoid them. Hope that starts to help you make an informed decision.
Regards,
Crush.
I think you start out a little too emphatically in this post by claiming that cross-cultural preferences are genetically determined. Your later modification of this statement to "can't assume that there's no genetic determination" is more accurate.
I can think of at least one explanation of why there would be cross-cultural similarities in preference that are yet not genetically determined: human cultures are not significantly different with regard to the nutritional challenges that they face.
However, I suspect that it is probably correct that there are strong genetic determinants of these things. I merely object to the hyperbole of your opening statement.
Regards,
Crush
I agree with the general thrust of your argument, but isn't Katz asking "how many people will want to have retarded, cystic fibrosis sufferers" as offspring? Presumably not many. He hints that this may be bad because then we will have no-one to develop our finer feelings for.
With regard to does everyone agree with what constitutes "beautiful" there have been several studies published over the last few years that indicate that there are widely accepted facial proportions that hold cross-culturally. Admittedly this is offset by new studies on body-morphology which would seem to indicate that verious indigenes would consider our "ideal" of thin women rather strange.
All those things humans have generally been pretty good at maintaining all these years.
Hmmm. Rather a whig view of history there - not to mention that the manipulation of the very stuff of humanity is possibly a little more dramatic and intrusive than the conveyer-belts. What evidence is there that most people and civilizations use anything for "net-good" purposes?
Take your friend the production-line. Its major use is the untrammeled production of excess consumer goods whose unchecked consumption is causing us a lot of environmental grief.
Yes, the solution to these problems is "Law! Order! Morality!" but the implementation of these laudable words leaves much to be desired. Perhaps you believe that the unchecked pursuit of profit through "free-trade" will magically result in the "invisible hand" arranging our world so that these ideals precipitate out somehow. I don't. I believe that at this moment we are far from democracy and far from morality. Katz is right to worry.
Lest you scoff, consider the major applications of genetic engineering so far: uniform livestock (yes I know that old-fashioned breeding was an attempt at this) to facilitate that production line of yours and the domination of plant foodstuffs by one large undemocratic, unmoral company. They at least are ordered!
Welcome to the new law!
Just out of interest, when you say the maximum tax rate is 50-60% is that on a top portion of income? That is to say the first US$ 15,000 would be untaxed, the next $10,000 taxed at 30% and so on?
Regards,
Crush