Genetic Engineering and the Purpose of it and Nature's Role in Genetic Code Mapping - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#15053976
I think this would be a fine thread to deal with the topic of genetic engineering and AI and how many obstacles or pros and cons it might have?


First a good thing to do is to deal with the topic of Genetic Diversity and why Genetic diversity exists?









So why is gene coding and diversity important?

@blackjack21 this is your opportunity to argue your points of view for genetic engineering.

For me? You will have to admit that diversity serves a specific purpose. And how to realize that the diversity reinforces life. It doesn't weaken it. At the same time if you want to snip and slice and splice in new instructions? How are you going to get past the obstacles of doing that? Most people in the world are suffering around getting basics done. Such as clean water, a good shelter, solar energy, a stable work or school life, and security for the future. So how does one create genetic engineered people without investment in basic standards of living?
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Tainari88 wrote:@blackjack21 this is your opportunity to argue your points of view for genetic engineering.

Azuquita, I find it amusing that you selected a video about a man who is talking about his struggles to understand people and then talking about iron in hemoglobin, in the human heart. I immediately thought, "iron heart," and imagined you cringing at the notion.

Tainari88 wrote:For me? You will have to admit that diversity serves a specific purpose.

Sure. Survival, adaptation and competition.

Tainari88 wrote:And how to realize that the diversity reinforces life.

All animals survive on the death of other living things and devour them to survive. That may not please Erich Fromm, but it is a scientific fact.

Tainari88 wrote:At the same time if you want to snip and slice and splice in new instructions? How are you going to get past the obstacles of doing that?

You are implying that genetic engineering is proceeding according to my personal desires. Not so. It's proceeding whether I like it or not, and whether you like it or not. The obstacles to doing that are mostly human ignorance of genetic engineering. Soon enough, it will be legal impediments. However, you can do it now at relatively low cost with the attendant risk of few controls.

Tainari88 wrote:Most people in the world are suffering around getting basics done.

And out come the violins... Nobody said that political equality was going to be the net result of this eventuality, at least not me anyway.

Tainari88 wrote:So how does one create genetic engineered people without investment in basic standards of living?

It likely starts with the very rich and highly intelligent, and maybe highly competitive people in other areas--like I'm sure body builders and athletes would be interested.

Start boning up on CRISPR cas-9.





As you might know, I work in open source software. People with that ethos typically do not want to be ruled by oppressive governments, large corporations, or controlled strictly by monied interests. There is already a gene hacker community out there. So start with that, and we shall see where it takes us.
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blackjack21 wrote:Azuquita, I find it amusing that you selected a video about a man who is talking about his struggles to understand people and then talking about iron in hemoglobin, in the human heart. I immediately thought, "iron heart," and imagined you cringing at the notion.


Oh Relampaguito, at heart my philosophy about humanity is scientific and not religious. I am a humanist not a person who is particularly married to religion and superstition. I never was. I do believe religion is a very important culturally impactful fact of human societies. But being an Erich Fromm Socialist and humanist socialist doesn't exclude science Relampaguito. It complements it. The series is about my way of seeing genes and it is scientific. The differences between how you see humans and I see humans? Is what I hope this thread is going to elaborate on? He the presenter in the third video struggles to understand human beings because he is a very scientifically dedicated thinker and doesn't see the attraction for nonsense, and many illogical policies that politics, corporate capitalist industries and other types of thought processes in human life are about Senor Blackjack. BTW, you spelled Azuquita perfectly....thanks. Big thumbs up on that one. :D

The purpose for that particular video is about how all of us are dependent on the delicate balance of elements from the periodic table of elements for our very existence. How we deal with our connectivity on many levels is what my points are going to be about. We are very connected to each other. Our diversity serves a purpose. For you it might be something very different politically, socially and in terms of what the purpose of human society should be about than what I believe it should be about. That video is about that. BTW, the heart is just a pump. Emotionally loving and expansive people as all humans do, produce all their emotions in their brains and in their livers. Livers are the organ that deals with emotions. The heart circulates. But human culture is funny Relampaguito, the pump that keeps us alive is assigned the essential nature of having love for us culturally speaking. So I use it that way. It doesn't mean I think you have an iron heart. Lol. Well you do, but in another way. Hee hee.

Sure. Survival, adaptation and competition.


And it could be survival, adaptation and cooperation for mutually beneficial survival and advancement for the human race. Something I think will be essential.


All animals survive on the death of other living things and devour them to survive. That may not please Erich Fromm, but it is a scientific fact.


Well there is a hierarchy in the animal kingdom, the vast majority of large animals tend to be vegetarians because plant life is easier to feed off of and, more reliable sources of nutrients than hunting animals that are fast and good at escaping the hunter, and meat takes a lot to mature into and is full of cholesterol (that for a predator is not a bad thing, but not a particularly good thing for a human being to be consuming consistently),so again, fruit, veggies and legumes and grains, get ripe for eating status in a much shorter time frame, than meat or other high protein sources that predators like to feed off of, and even they often eat non meat diets. Example: Dogs, cats, lions, and tigers. Known to eat veggies and other things when meat is not available, including rice, bread and oats for example. Erich Fromm distinguishes the natural world from a human socially constructed society built to cater to power relationships favoring one group of humans over others. It has very little to do with instinct that Mother Nature gives to all living creatures. You might think Slavery for example emerged because it was a natural hierarchy. It never was. It can be discarded and substituted for wage labor. Wage labor eventually will be discarded for another system that is more efficient and will be more adaptable for a world in which you need to cover the man with basics and build the society more evenly to avoid instability. There is evolution in human social structures and economic structures BJ. Whether you don't want to see it or not. Lol. Erich Fromm deals with human psychological states that need to be examined for consistency and results. Most scientific people do that BJ. ;)

You are implying that genetic engineering is proceeding according to my personal desires. Not so. It's proceeding whether I like it or not, and whether you like it or not. The obstacles to doing that are mostly human ignorance of genetic engineering. Soon enough, it will be legal impediments. However, you can do it now at relatively low cost with the attendant risk of few controls.


You think people are going to go for 'few controls' over something so vital to their lives as altering a gene code that is complex like the first video demonstrates? You truly think it is that easy to convince someone "Hmmm, let me snip these instructions on this exact locii and put in something that might protect you....it has never been done on your exact combination of peptides or protein code but let us give it a whirl and see if it works?"You got some serious scientific challenges and moral and ethical challenges to all that. In your video the MIT folks are thinking of it being applied to help people suffering from chronic disease and genetically defective instructions that is bringing down their quality of life. It doesn't mention some elite athletes going for a superior gene code that only applies to them? So what about the medical community who wants the research to go to curing bad diseases that a lot of people in African nations, Latin American and Asian nations and people from all over the world suffer from....and you come along and say, "We don't give a toss about them! This new genetic editing is for making the great ones greater?" Bring out the violins on how you are going to do a song and dance about convincing others that genetic coding and editing should be an elitist application? How are you going to do that one?


And out come the violins... Nobody said that political equality was going to be the net result of this eventuality, at least not me anyway.


So it will be another experiment in that only rich people are going to be genetically engineered for superiority? That sounds like Master Race bullshit to me Blackjack21. Like a Gattaca movie. If you have genetic engineering and don't use it to improve the quality of life for humans (rich and poor) without much favoritism then how do you think it should be used Relampaguito? You tell me?

It likely starts with the very rich and highly intelligent, and maybe highly competitive people in other areas--like I'm sure body builders and athletes would be interested.


So this technology should be used for athletes? Does that include intelligent Africans and intelligent Asians and intelligent and athletic Latin Americans? Or only some who are elites? And who is going to sponsor this elite group? Because elite athletes come in all races and ethnic groups now BJ. But who is going to be using it? Some elite ones only.....hmmmm. Is that going to go over well with the rest of the áverage earners and not elite athletes? I don't know who would back such a thing? Massive infusions of people.


Start boning up on CRISPR cas-9.





As you might know, I work in open source software. People with that ethos typically do not want to be ruled by oppressive governments, large corporations, or controlled strictly by monied interests. There is already a gene hacker community out there. So start with that, and we shall see where it takes us.


So now people are going to be hacking genes? Hmmm. Who is to say what is determined to be superior genes for a particular goal to reach? Diversity is innate for a reason BJ. It is to be adaptable for changing conditions. If you commit to one particular goal of big muscles or elite lung capacity or running, etc. What happens if something in the environment changes and that is no longer viable?

If you don't pay attention to keeping the diversity healthy? And strong and the web of it complex and tight like it says in the video? The actual material you will have to work with will eventually be affected. Negatively. Though it is interesting to think that one can create a community of people who have no government who rules them or corporations and who only want to be exclusive socioeconomically and reinforce their privileges and want the gene code to do the 'superior human' thing for them-- and dominate a gene code to do what with that? That is what is interesting to me? Eh?

They want to be able to change why adaptation and diversity exists....it should serve their purposes and they can deny the right to have a healthy life for those who suffer from other genetic problems? Or is it to improve human life?

How does one bypass the selection process that nature has done. Nature edits out species. It does. But why? That is the question. Why does nature edit species? Because things are moving along. It is like the breath experiment that Mr. Chi there talks about....we are tied to this planet Relampaguito. We have emerged from that dance it has done....to make our lives possible. Yet somehow the reason for our diversity should be a place where only a few superior ones make it to the editing floor? Lol. You don't get at all why having billions of human combinations is better for us in the end than a few elites? You should.

You think all this biodiversity and relationship building is something that is irrelevant or you think it is important? We are all connected says the Chi man. And we are. Better start making politics happen that make that the central goal of who we are. Finally make it work for all of us instead of a few only. That is what I am about! How about you? ;)
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Tainari88 wrote:Oh Relampaguito, at heart my philosophy about humanity is scientific and not religious. I am a humanist not a person who is particularly married to religion and superstition.

Yet, you are married to equality and egalitarianism, which isn't particularly scientific. Diversity and equality are natural enemies.

Tainari88 wrote:The purpose for that particular video is about how all of us are dependent on the delicate balance of elements from the periodic table of elements for our very existence.

Yes. That's understood, but somewhat orthogonal unless you are really musing about the nature of life itself.

Tainari88 wrote:Our diversity serves a purpose. For you it might be something very different politically, socially and in terms of what the purpose of human society should be about than what I believe it should be about.

Well normative analysis always differs from positive analysis unless you are truly satisfied with the present state of affairs, and most people aren't. In many respects, I'm just noting what IS the case as I see it, not necessarily that I agree with it or think it is ideal. There is a big difference between saying "Life IS unfair" and saying "Life SHOULD BE unfair."

Tainari88 wrote:Bring out the violins on how you are going to do a song and dance about convincing others that genetic coding and editing should be an elitist application? How are you going to do that one?

I pointed out that the opposite is likely going to be the case, because it is already possible to buy CRISPR kits. If you have Netflix, I would suggest watching the Unnatural Selection series. Guardian: Unnatural Selection: the eye-opening Netflix docuseries on gene editing There is some very interesting scientific information along with some interesting debates about treatment costs, etc.

Tainari88 wrote:You got some serious scientific challenges and moral and ethical challenges to all that.

Yes, but we are also living in different times now. One of the bigger socio-cultural changes that has grown up in the wake of the post-Cold War environment is that the globalists have trashed the working classes in Europe and America. That means nothing for the purposes of this discussion technically; however, politically most people do not trust so-called 'experts' anymore. World War II was won in 6 years, 4 if you're an American. The war in Afghanistan has been going on for 18 years now--almost twice as long as the Vietnam War. Do you trust the generals? The military experts? Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton in significant part because nobody trusts the so-called elite anymore--and rightly so.

For example, we know for the purposes of this discussion that a biological male has an x and a y chromosome and a female has two x chromosomes. Yet, we have people with medical degrees suggesting gender re-assignment surgery is possible, that gender is a social construct, and all sorts of other bullshit. We have a SCOTUS that says that homosexual marriage is a right under the 14th Amendment when clearly it says no such thing. We have an electorate that is in almost total disconnect with the elite, who remain in a staggering degree of denial that revolution is upon them. Again, off point, but Tony Blair's seat was lost by Labour and won by the Tories--TONY BLAIR'S SEAT!!! The world is upside down.

Tainari88 wrote:In your video the MIT folks are thinking of it being applied to help people suffering from chronic disease and genetically defective instructions that is bringing down their quality of life. It doesn't mention some elite athletes going for a superior gene code that only applies to them?

Ok. So when I argued against liberal sexual mores--not being particularly prim myself--a big part of my point was that people who understood the scientific method, the germ theory of disease, etc. also understood that sexually transmitted diseases were well known. Yet, they proposed sexual liberation in conjunction with birth control as some sort of liberation theology. These people already understood herpes. It's not like chicken pox, shingles and cold sores were unknown. Yet, there were no cures for them. Yet, they pushed this anyway. Where were their morals? Where were their ethics? Do you ever listen to people talking about the cultural revolution in the 1960s? They all speak as though they were somehow "innocent." Bullshit. They grew up in the wake of World War II and the holocaust, Joseph Mengele experiments, Anglo-American Eugenics and nuclear weapons. They weren't innocent at all. That was a sham to avoid ethical and moral debates. One of the outcomes of that was the HIV/AIDS epidemic. It has killed over 35M people, and it's almost a non-factor in highly conservative societies. Are you going to submit your actions to what some liberal elite says is moral or ethical? Do you think in view of medical ethics that transgender surgery is ethical? Do you think it is ethically sound to remove a person's functional penis and testicles and manufacture a semblance of a vagina and tell that man that he is now a woman? I frankly do not. I disagree to the point that I question the ethics and morality of the entire edifice of Western Civilization. I question the legitimacy of the US Supreme Court. I remain steadfastly unconvinced to the point that I know longer think I have any moral or ethical obligation to follow the dictates of such wicked and deranged people.

So when I approach these questions, I'm more inclined to positive analysis in part because I don't think we have a solid agreement in the West anymore on what is ethical or moral. So I look at this much more in the realm of what is possible. On the religious front, one of the reasons I think the left should be very hesitant about trashing Christianity is because fascism is the much more likely outcome, not communism. Communism is a universalist idea--it lacks the very diversity you think is important in nature, but somehow not important in politics.

Tanari88 wrote:So what about the medical community who wants the research to go to curing bad diseases that a lot of people in African nations, Latin American and Asian nations and people from all over the world suffer from....and you come along and say, "We don't give a toss about them! This new genetic editing is for making the great ones greater?"

That's a political question, not a scientific one.

Tainari88 wrote:So it will be another experiment in that only rich people are going to be genetically engineered for superiority? That sounds like Master Race bullshit to me Blackjack21. Like a Gattaca movie.

Right. I don't think it will be limited to only the rich, but it will most likely not reach the poor quickly.

Tainari88 wrote:If you have genetic engineering and don't use it to improve the quality of life for humans (rich and poor) without much favoritism then how do you think it should be used Relampaguito? You tell me?

That's another normative question. The more interesting question is how will it be used, whether either of us likes it or not?

Tainari88 wrote:So now people are going to be hacking genes? Hmmm. Who is to say what is determined to be superior genes for a particular goal to reach?

Yes, and that's where the slippery slope of liberal morals hits the reality of genetic engineering. If a woman has the right to do what she wants with her own body, does that include modifying her DNA? I mean, if it's perfectly okay to incorporate a profoundly questionable practice like gender reassignment surgery into healthcare plans, why shouldn't something like elective DNA modification be allowed on the same basis? The right to use drug recreationally follows the same sort of pleasure principle ethic propagated by the leftist side of the liberal cabal.
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blackjack21 wrote:Yet, you are married to equality and egalitarianism, which isn't particularly scientific. Diversity and equality are natural enemies.


You and I need to go deep into what biodiversity is about, what diversity is in evolutionary theory and how it works in nature, the distinctions between natural world laws and biological and other hard science theories like Dr. Chi's....and then correlate the differences between political science and social science and what is malleable and what is not. You are basing your arguments on two concepts. Equality in what sense Relampaguito? No, you keep thinking science is about some kind of socioeconomic hierarchy that is immutable and doesn't change. That is not true Senor. It never has been. How human societies structure themselves has evolved and changed (sometimes for the good and sometimes for the bad) through human history. I think you need to see how and why human societies structure themselves the way they do. I think once you do that and you continue to insist that society and genes are set in stone and that human beings are not malleable and you are set and so on? You will lose all your argumentation claiming it is more scientific than mine. Because it is not. Give it a good hard look and debate with me. For now? Equality is about what Dr Chi talks about. All of us emerging from a natural system and forming one species that produces fertile offspring. You go off into value judgments about you having Neanderthal DNA and in Europeans from the Western part of Europe it makes you more greedy because of the cold. Africans more agressive. Etc. A wild leap over the reality of enormous variations within all groups. Within European groups. African groups, Asian groups. etc. Enormous diversity and gene and mutation variations everywhere. Why? For that tight survival. Our relationship to nature is not something superficial and isolated BJ. It is extremely close and tightly knit. And the European genes weren't the only ones created under our species. The value it is given often has more to do with an artificially created economic or social structure that HUMAN POWER relationships ascribe to it rather than any real scientific notion of superiority or better adaptive abilities. Many cultural or behavioral things in a culture has to do with the conditions lived under it. Do you want to study how that happens Relampaguito? I am all for it.


Ay BJ, I got to go and pick up my son from school. But I will be back to address the rest of your points.
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Tainari88 wrote:No, you keep thinking science is about some kind of socioeconomic hierarchy that is immutable and doesn't change.

Where have I said that? I'm asking you to quote me (that is, make a clear distinction between what I've said and what conversation you are having about me in your head).

Tainari88 wrote:I think once you do that and you continue to insist that society and genes are set in stone and that human beings are not malleable and you are set and so on?

I have never said any such thing. In fact, the whole point of a debate on CRISPR cas-9 so specifically is moving towards what Stephen Hawking described self-directed evolution. We are on the cusp of that now.

In fact, a good part of why people don't like my views is precisely because I don't see all humans as equals. It's because I think traits have evolved to give advantages in certain environments over time. I think both our soft and hard sciences are actually quite primitive in our understanding, and as such I don't think the arrogance of the scientific community is warranted at all. The scientific community is actually quite political--more political than scientific I would say, quite possibly because as Eisenhower warned, they would come to depend upon government grants.

Tainari88 wrote:All of us emerging from a natural system and forming one species that produces fertile offspring.

Why do you think that is the natural outcome? You've read Sapiens. Where are the Denisovans? The Neanderthal? Gone. Don't you think it's quite possible that humans might one day be gone? Can't you see a possibility of something evolving past where we are now? That's precisely the fear of AI. That's precisely why Bill Joy wrote "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us" It was his pessimistic response to perpetually optimistic futurists like Ray Kurzweil or Erik Drexler. Have you read any of their work? You can read Bill Joy's essay, and it had quite an impact among technologists.

Let me provide a bit of the opening for you:

Bill Joy wrote:FROM THE MOMENT I became involved in the creation of new technologies, their ethical dimensions have concerned me, but it was only in the autumn of 1998 that I became anxiously aware of how great are the dangers facing us in the 21st century. I can date the onset of my unease to the day I met Ray Kurzweil, the deservedly famous inventor of the first reading machine for the blind and many other amazing things.

CRISPR cas-9 was something these guys could conceive of, but they didn't know what it was at the time or that it would work so specifically. We are there now. We are on the cusp.

Bill Joy wrote:While we were talking, Ray approached and a conversation began, the subject of which haunts me to this day.


Bill Joy wrote:In the hotel bar, Ray gave me a partial preprint of his then-forthcoming book The Age of Spiritual Machines, which outlined a utopia he foresaw—one in which humans gained near immortality by becoming one with robotic technology.

I read that book too. That also had quite an impact on me, if anything giving me a concrete example of how the order of increasing complexity in life and in high technology were in direct opposition to entropy. While we computer science types aren't biochemists by any stretch of the imagination, the computational and discrete aspects of DNA and RNA are something we're quite good at. It was also around this time that intelligent design started gaining traction.

Bill Joy wrote:Due to improved techniques the elite will have greater control over the masses; and because human work will no longer be necessary the masses will be superfluous, a useless burden on the system. If the elite is ruthless they may simply decide to exterminate the mass of humanity. If they are humane they may use propaganda or other psychological or biological techniques to reduce the birth rate until the mass of humanity becomes extinct, leaving the world to the elite. Or, if the elite consists of soft-hearted liberals, they may decide to play the role of good shepherds to the rest of the human race. They will see to it that everyone's physical needs are satisfied, that all children are raised under psychologically hygienic conditions, that everyone has a wholesome hobby to keep him busy, and that anyone who may become dissatisfied undergoes "treatment" to cure his "problem." Of course, life will be so purposeless that people will have to be biologically or psychologically engineered either to remove their need for the power process or make them "sublimate" their drive for power into some harmless hobby.

Or the elite will engage in labor arbitrage, rendering once moderately skilled middle class obsolete, flooding the society with unskilled foreigners illegally present who cannot lawfully claim unemployment or welfare, while simultaneously allowing copious amounts of heroin and fentanyl in to subdue the unemployed homeless masses...

Bill Joy wrote:In the book, you don't discover until you turn the page that the author of this passage is Theodore Kaczynski—the Unabomber.

I read Ted Kaczynksi's manifesto too. It's worth the read. I think he's off on some things, but he does have a very interesting take on leftists.

Tainari88 wrote:Our relationship to nature is not something superficial and isolated BJ. It is extremely close and tightly knit.

This is where I don't agree. The most genetic variation among humans is in Africa, not Europe of Asia. That suggests that most of the diversity in Africa probably wasn't sufficiently adapted to the environments of Northern Europe or Asia.

Tainari88 wrote:The value it is given often has more to do with an artificially created economic or social structure that HUMAN POWER relationships ascribe to it rather than any real scientific notion of superiority or better adaptive abilities. Many cultural or behavioral things in a culture has to do with the conditions lived under it. Do you want to study how that happens Relampaguito? I am all for it.

I disagree with the first statement. I think the economic models tend to evolve more naturally themselves. Microeconomics does a fairly good job of describing some of the basics of a market economy and the rational self-interest--with the proviso and understanding that humans are not perfectly rational. That said, what it takes to survive in tribal Central West Africa is quite different from what it takes to survive in tribal Northern Europe. In Central West Africa, you have two seasons--hot and hotter; wet and wetter. In Northern Europe, you have four seasons. You better have enough food stored up for the winter or you die. Consequently, genes that affect behavior over time tend to favor certain traits in certain climates, but not necessarily in others. Genetic variation isn't limited to behavior either. Outward appearance also varies.
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blackjack21 wrote:Where have I said that? I'm asking you to quote me (that is, make a clear distinction between what I've said and what conversation you are having about me in your head).


I have never said any such thing. In fact, the whole point of a debate on CRISPR cas-9 so specifically is moving towards what Stephen Hawking described self-directed evolution. We are on the cusp of that now.

In fact, a good part of why people don't like my views is precisely because I don't see all humans as equals. It's because I think traits have evolved to give advantages in certain environments over time. I think both our soft and hard sciences are actually quite primitive in our understanding, and as such I don't think the arrogance of the scientific community is warranted at all. The scientific community is actually quite political--more political than scientific I would say, quite possibly because as Eisenhower warned, they would come to depend upon government grants.


Why do you think that is the natural outcome? You've read Sapiens. Where are the Denisovans? The Neanderthal? Gone. Don't you think it's quite possible that humans might one day be gone? Can't you see a possibility of something evolving past where we are now? That's precisely the fear of AI. That's precisely why Bill Joy wrote "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us" It was his pessimistic response to perpetually optimistic futurists like Ray Kurzweil or Erik Drexler. Have you read any of their work? You can read Bill Joy's essay, and it had quite an impact among technologists.

Let me provide a bit of the opening for you:


CRISPR cas-9 was something these guys could conceive of, but they didn't know what it was at the time or that it would work so specifically. We are there now. We are on the cusp.




I read that book too. That also had quite an impact on me, if anything giving me a concrete example of how the order of increasing complexity in life and in high technology were in direct opposition to entropy. While we computer science types aren't biochemists by any stretch of the imagination, the computational and discrete aspects of DNA and RNA are something we're quite good at. It was also around this time that intelligent design started gaining traction.


Or the elite will engage in labor arbitrage, rendering once moderately skilled middle class obsolete, flooding the society with unskilled foreigners illegally present who cannot lawfully claim unemployment or welfare, while simultaneously allowing copious amounts of heroin and fentanyl in to subdue the unemployed homeless masses...


I read Ted Kaczynksi's manifesto too. It's worth the read. I think he's off on some things, but he does have a very interesting take on leftists.


This is where I don't agree. The most genetic variation among humans is in Africa, not Europe of Asia. That suggests that most of the diversity in Africa probably wasn't sufficiently adapted to the environments of Northern Europe or Asia.


I disagree with the first statement. I think the economic models tend to evolve more naturally themselves. Microeconomics does a fairly good job of describing some of the basics of a market economy and the rational self-interest--with the proviso and understanding that humans are not perfectly rational. That said, what it takes to survive in tribal Central West Africa is quite different from what it takes to survive in tribal Northern Europe. In Central West Africa, you have two seasons--hot and hotter; wet and wetter. In Northern Europe, you have four seasons. You better have enough food stored up for the winter or you die. Consequently, genes that affect behavior over time tend to favor certain traits in certain climates, but not necessarily in others. Genetic variation isn't limited to behavior either. Outward appearance also varies.


Relampaguito, all this needs to be pulled apart. You are not really understanding how genes and environment interact well. And you don't seem to understand that genes is just one component of adaptive behaviors in humans?

Relampaguito, you fail to realize that humans interchange genes and you got a mixture of genes for hundreds and then thousands of years. You can have one set for a settled populace that has genetic drift for its isolation. And then you got people from the Caribbean who have been mixing both culturally and genetically for centuries. The rubrics you think are pure are not. So what does that mean?

Neanderthals were selected against. Simply because the climate change and the new species adapted better to the Ice Age conditions. But notice they mated with the new group and that is why you have a percentage of the failed species in your genes?

You have to realize that humans have adapted to almost all physical environments from the North and South pole to all environments in between. The purpose of all that variation? What is it for? Editing it down?

The way it happens in genetics is that you take a Swede (the lightest skin color, blue eyes, tall, etc stereotype) and you drop 100k or more of the Swedes in the hottest parts of Africa. You hope they survive and not all die off of skin cancer. You check back in a quarter of a million or more years? They start looking like African sub Saharans. So what does that mean? That the Swedes are inferior and the Africans are superior? Or is it that the Swedes who adapted and had a quarter of a million years to work their relationship out with a changing environment survived by adapting and dropping the Swedes (editing out) the Swedes that were too light skinned and could not cope? That is evolutionary theory. You have to see that the planet and its environment is the one dictating adaptability. But human society mixes readily with each other. Right now we don't have Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens competing for a niche. That fight is done. We got a lot of interracial mixing and an enormous encroachment of humans in all the continents and they got a big and deep series of multiracial codes in their DNA. What does it mean? You can be a fool and say it means purity is an advantage, or you can be realistic and say that since modern modes of travel and the speed of transportation in the last century and half you got a lot more people living within each other's proximities that is not where the original genetic adaptation occurred Senor Relampaguito.

You brought up some interesting points. I think I will work on them....but I got five things going on.

Will be back in the later afternoon to answer them BJ.
#15054759
blackjack21 wrote:


It was also around this time that intelligent design started gaining traction.




Intelligent Design was invented by a Right wing kook to try and sneak religion into high school.

It didn't work.

It has never had 'traction'. The court threw it out, and it is ridiculous to think science would touch it with a billion light year pole.
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Tainari88 wrote:And you don't seem to understand that genes is just one component of adaptive behaviors in humans?

Is that a question or an assertion with a question mark? The discussion is genetic engineering. I'm certainly not discounting culture. However, I'm noting how genetics can influence behavior.

Tainari88 wrote:You have to realize that humans have adapted to almost all physical environments from the North and South pole to all environments in between.

There aren't any permanent human settlements on the North or South poles. Humans do need to eat, need fresh water and need to not freeze to death.

Tainari88 wrote:The rubrics you think are pure are not.

Why do you keep asserting that I think something is pure? I don't think I've ever asserted any such thing.

Tainari88 wrote:The way it happens in genetics is that you take a Swede (the lightest skin color, blue eyes, tall, etc stereotype) and you drop 100k or more of the Swedes in the hottest parts of Africa. You hope they survive and not all die off of skin cancer. You check back in a quarter of a million or more years? They start looking like African sub Saharans. So what does that mean? That the Swedes are inferior and the Africans are superior?

You can certainly say that the Africans have a superior adaptation for that environment. It's more than skin deep too. For example, sickle cell helps to cope with malaria. Before quinine, Europeans generally avoided going inland in Central Africa precisely because it was often a death sentence.

Tainari88 wrote:You have to see that the planet and its environment is the one dictating adaptability.

Historically. We are now at a point where we can start making these changes ourselves. So what if we can remove Tay-Sachs for example?

late wrote:Intelligent Design was invented by a Right wing kook to try and sneak religion into high school.

No it wasn't. That's an absolutely stupid assertion. Yes, there are Christian fundamentalists who latched on to Intelligent Design. However, the issue is basically a direct challenge to Darwin's theory. Darwin didn't know anything about DNA, RNA, Genes, etc. As a description for breeds, like different breeds of dogs or mutations of influenza, it's quite good. It doesn't actually show the creation of a new species, however, and it also does not describe the origin of life itself.

I happen to be involved in computer science, and a lot of the challenges to Darwinism come from computer heads. The following is quite an interesting show from the Hoover Institution and three different professors talking about the problems with Darwin's theory. It's about an hour, but worth your time.

#15054841
blackjack21 wrote:

No it wasn't. That's an absolutely stupid assertion. Yes, there are Christian fundamentalists who latched on to Intelligent Design. However, the issue is basically a direct challenge to Darwin's theory. Darwin didn't know anything about DNA, RNA, Genes, etc. As a description for breeds, like different breeds of dogs or mutations of influenza, it's quite good. It doesn't actually show the creation of a new species, however, and it also does not describe the origin of life itself.







You were correct in that Phillip Johnson did not invent it. But it was dead, no scientist would ever have a use for it. Johnson weaponised it, turned it into a political weapon. Which is the only part worth talking about.


"In an opinion issued Tuesday, U.S. District Judge John Jones ruled that teaching "intelligent design" would violate the Constitutional separation of church and state.

"We have concluded that it is not [science], and moreover that ID cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents"
http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/12/20/intel ... index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/12/20/intelligent.design/index.html

So you were correct insofar that Phillip Johnson did not invent it. But it was, and is, unscientific crap.



"Intelligent design (ID) is a pseudoscientific argument for the existence of God, presented by its proponents as "an evidence-based scientific theory about life's origins".[1][2][3][4][5] Proponents claim that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection."[6] ID is a form of creationism that lacks empirical support and offers no testable or tenable hypotheses, so it is not science."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_design

I might look at the video later, but seriously, outside one of the top journals, it's nothing more than a fart.

Stephen Jay Gould wrote a book with you in mind, assuming you want a clue:

https://www.amazon.com/Structure-Evolutionary-Theory-Stephen-Gould/dp/0674006135/ref=sr_1_12?crid=34MW20FWHM9I4&keywords=stephen+jay+gould+books&qid=1576664866&sprefix=stephen+jay+gould%2Caps%2C147&sr=8-12
#15054845
First, the Hoover Institute is a propaganda mill that keeps a few academics around to maintain a veneer of respectability.

Second, I've just started the video, and they have already screwed up. They are talking about Darwin, and saying he can't explain the big changes.

Which is what scientists have been working on for a long time. My favorite hypothesis is Stephen Jay Gould's Punctuated Equilibrium.

Bottom line, of course we need a new theory. But there's no way Intelligent Design can be that new theory. It's a joke.
#15055263
@blackjack21
Historically. We are now at a point where we can start making these changes ourselves. So what if we can remove Tay-Sachs for example?


Well Relampaguito, I am sad to say I have been in some blackouts and brown outs here. A thunderstorm or two. Now can reply. But it is very very early Friday morning.

I want to address this for now. How well has the political philosophy of we can do our own changes ourselves worked out for us? In terms of not having threats of nuclear war, depleted uranium for Navy practices giving innocent people deadly cancers? Toxic food and toxic water and huge garbage patches in the Pacific Ocean? So many issues with---allowing corporations and greed fuel driven people be in charge of health care, education, public lands, and corruption coloring everything to the point of dysfunctional realities happening in political life---and somehow the greedy narcissistic capitalistic driven individuals are the ones who are going to be in charge of? What exactly BJ? Editing out the species to make it better?

You mentioned elite athletes and bodybuilders, skipped over the entire reality of huge variation within groups.

You need to BJ state what you think genetic engineering is about? Health for all humans? Or relief for the ones who can pay for better health? How much money would it take in investment to improve the entire human race? And if it is not for the entire human race who is this for BJ?

The capitalist machine types and neoliberals keep thinking they can dictate and change the world into how they want it to go. They can't even repair the damage they have done to the environment, to the planet, and to the people who live in deep poverty and struggle to live and eat everyday and resign themselves to living in poverty for the rest of their lives. They can't even FIX that damn problem BJ! How are they going to ''re-design"the human race eh? You tell me.....

You need to see just how unhealthy the world currently is and how much damage happens and how much has to be done for making people whole again--DO THE WORK of making a better society before deciding to edit the entire human race without some intense responsibilities being accepted FIRST on the part of a dysfunctional human system. Don't even go for the 'gene editing' til you start dealing with the damage that already exists in this society.

Before seeing this video? By Dr. Joy....one has to start realizing that there are studies BJ where the African immigrants do well. The African Americans don't. And it is not about genes only. It is about trauma and history.

History has an impact. It always has.

We need to put some resources in getting a stable society. Because right now? You got dysfunction.



How does the body respond to high cortizone or stress levels? How does disease in a human body respond to enormous fear, anxiety and rejection, exclusion, poverty, denial and many other things?

It is a very interesting reality that you don't give that much weight when considering genetic engineering. You should. You blow off the empathetic reality that many people are under stress, have multigenerational stress and that their children inherit the damn baggage BJ. If you LOVED human beings and get involved? You take on that load and you take on that trauma and you make things better before you even try to 're-design" the superior folks. Did you see Gattaca? Where the perfect people had all the advantages but the ones who did not? What happened to them? How do you think this species of Homo Sapiens got to adapt to so many environments, survive so many traumas, invent so many things if the human race weren't made to be involved in every aspect of human survival in a natural environment and in a changing human social environment? We adapt and we deal with it. It doesn't mean it leaves us unscathed BJ. It means we stop being people with low social responsibilities and start stepping it up to high socially responsible beings. Cooperation, building, creating and working well together is far harder than simple selfish destruction. It is time we evolved to meet that social challenge BJ.

Not make another small elite who wants to benefit from knowledge and use it to be the ones who hold on to power without any kind of real social conscience. We have seen the damage that crap costs us as a species. It is TOO HIGH.
#15055264
blackjack21 wrote:Is that a question or an assertion with a question mark? The discussion is genetic engineering. I'm certainly not discounting culture. However, I'm noting how genetics can influence behavior.


Genetics are there and so is environment that is social, linguistic, and adaptive. So much of human society is socially learned. A lot of it is. Adaptation. Did you watch the aspects of human cultures that are adaptive? Socially. People vary. They can be urban, rural, lower working class and upper ruling class. How much of that is malleable and learned? How about diet? Someone poor living on crackers and processed cheese and no fruits or veggies or decent, and clean and balanced diets. If you change that? How much does their brain and body and cells change? No, BJ, this is a complex thing. But? How does one cope? With more exclusion and more divisiveness?

Why are we always changing....from infancy and childhood, to adolescence to adulthood...always transforming as individuals and as an entire species. It is really about staying connected BJ. To what the purpose of human society is about.


There aren't any permanent human settlements on the North or South poles. Humans do need to eat, need fresh water and need to not freeze to death.


Why do you keep asserting that I think something is pure? I don't think I've ever asserted any such thing.


You can certainly say that the Africans have a superior adaptation for that environment. It's more than skin deep too. For example, sickle cell helps to cope with malaria. Before quinine, Europeans generally avoided going inland in Central Africa precisely because it was often a death sentence.


Historically. We are now at a point where we can start making these changes ourselves. So what if we can remove Tay-Sachs for example?


No it wasn't. That's an absolutely stupid assertion. Yes, there are Christian fundamentalists who latched on to Intelligent Design. However, the issue is basically a direct challenge to Darwin's theory. Darwin didn't know anything about DNA, RNA, Genes, etc. As a description for breeds, like different breeds of dogs or mutations of influenza, it's quite good. It doesn't actually show the creation of a new species, however, and it also does not describe the origin of life itself.

I happen to be involved in computer science, and a lot of the challenges to Darwinism come from computer heads. The following is quite an interesting show from the Hoover Institution and three different professors talking about the problems with Darwin's theory. It's about an hour, but worth your time.

[/quote]
#15055435
Tainari88 wrote:You mentioned elite athletes and bodybuilders, skipped over the entire reality of huge variation within groups.

I'm thinking in marketing terms--who's the market? You know an interesting one would be the very wealthy. Older wealthy people are always interested in aging. Now consider the ethical implications of a welfare state. A welfare state would be fine with Mike Bloomberg, Donald Trump and Mitt Romney looking to extend their lives by modifying genes associated to aging; however, they'd pay for it themselves. If it were proposed for Medicare and it extended people's lives even 2-3 years, it could destroy Medicare and Social Security budgets overnight.

Tainari88 wrote:The capitalist machine types and neoliberals keep thinking they can dictate and change the world into how they want it to go. They can't even repair the damage they have done to the environment, to the planet, and to the people who live in deep poverty and struggle to live and eat everyday and resign themselves to living in poverty for the rest of their lives. They can't even FIX that damn problem BJ! How are they going to ''re-design"the human race eh? You tell me.....

I don't believe in a collective utopia, nor the whiggish/progressive view of a one directional march toward everything getting "better." Were native Americans poor or rich? Sophisticated, or "noble savages"? History has seen the collapse of the Greek, Roman, Mongolian and Chinese empires. We've seen conflicts between the iron age Celts and the Roman classical civilization, and then seen Rome fall and a resumption of Dark Age/Middle Age life. Living most of my life in California, I'm seeing right now the effects of a substantial regression and the absurdness of modern law as it tries to grapple with the situation. For example, I can take a shit on the sidewalk and shoot up heroin in front of a cop in San Francisco while both acts are patently illegal and nothing will happen to me, but if I drive while talking on my cell phone and hurt nobody I will get a $950 fine and it will be enforced. That's the paradox of modern civilization run by capitalist progressives, leftists and "woke" people. I don't see that being sustainable, and why I relish watching Nancy Pelosi melt down like the Wicked Witch of the West in the Wizard of Oz. However, what replaces the welfare state when it collapses? Probably something like feudalism again. It won't be pretty, but it already isn't pretty.

So are we talking about genetic engineering or political science? You seem to conflate the two quite a lot, and you use "we" as though a collective decision would be made about everything. We haven't made a collective decision that we're going to make 10% of our population alcoholics and heroin addicts, for example. We don't all agree that we're each going to drink two coca colas today. There are a lot of choices that happen without a collective decision.

As a computer head, it's much easier for me to simply abandon the notion of equality for an abstraction like dignity. I certainly understand the appeal to rationalism. However, I see the concept of "equality" in political terms as becoming problematic, because it forces looking at the world in a certain way that doesn't necessarily capture the essence of the world as it is and progressives and socialists do not seem to like to be limited in scope. In formal logic, the opposite of equality is inequality. It's not necessarily ordinal--greater than or less than. Yet, that's precisely the argument I get each time I indicate that I'm no longer an egalitarian, but still a libertarian. There is a presumption that if you don't see equality, you must see an ordinal rank rather than a series of inequalities.

Genes aren't as well understood as we would like them to be, but that is changing and it's changing very rapidly. It makes people very uncomfortable to even discuss such notions.

When Obama was president and was constantly trolling people on race (face it, he was as much a troll as Trump is), I found it entertaining to bring up The Bell Curve, precisely because academia refused to debate it seriously and simply used what Clinton acolytes called "The Politics of Personal Destruction" to trash Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein along with the research they predicated the book upon. The Bell Curve was not a thesis that said, "White people are smarter than black people." It was a book that was arguing that ditching vocational training (something that is now politically acceptable to discuss as Marco Rubio and Steve Bullock have shown, provided IQ or race is not mentioned anywhere) and trying to force everyone to go to college was not sound policy, because people were not equally equipped intellectually for graduate and post-graduate academic work. Herrnstein died not too long after the book was published, but Murray revisited the topic--this time omitting race altogether in a book called "Coming Apart"--addressing inequality among whites in America. Many other works have shown deep segregation in society based not upon race, but upon intelligence levels. Income distribution graphs overlay IQ distribution graphs very nicely. Conversely, people with serious social problems overlay people with low IQ very nicely as well.

I remember arguing this years ago, whether it was rates of sexually transmitted disease or violent crime rates, these distributions were the unmistakable central tendency--again, not absolute, not a ignoring outliers, etc. Just a central tendency.

Since intelligence is such a complex subject, it does not lend itself easily to this discussion. It's been shown that intelligence is a strongly heritable trait. There are over 50 genes identified with strong correlations to intelligence, which is too complex to hash out on a phpBB site. Yet, some genes have been shown to be linked with particular biologic functions and behavior patterns. For example, the Monoamine Oxidase A gene (MAOA) shows a high degree of anti-social behavior in people with a knock out of the gene and in people with the 2-repeat allele, and a somewhat more attenuated, environment influenced tendency toward anti-social behavior in people with a 3-repeat allele. That's not seen in people with a 4- or 5-repeat allele.

Knockout of the MOAO gene is an extreme outlier. I believe it was identified in a Dutch family, who were impossibly violent rapists who attacked police, etc. Yet, it's an extreme outlier. In African-American populations, it's upwards of 5.5% of their population. It's almost unheard of in whites and Asians. Among the more environment-influential 3-repeat allele of MAOA, about 55% of African-Americans have a 3-repeat allele, and about 33% of white Americans do--I'd have to go back and look that up for exact statistics if the "woke" people haven't scrubbed all of the studies from the internet. This 3-repeat case is interesting, because this is where social welfare demonstrates an influence in attenuating anti-social behavior--something that progressives, socialists, leftists, egalitarians, whatever you want to call them want to be true of ALL people. Yet, it's not. So in some people, social welfare policies simply aren't going to help. Having a 2-repeat allele of MAOA doesn't automatically make you a criminal; however, in pubescent and adult males until, oh, about 40 or so, they are dramatically more likely to have been detained and/or incarcerated by the police if they have a 2-repeat allele of MAOA, and it's not even close--I mean like 80% more likely. The police aren't even close to smart enough to do genetic profiling--it's not something they can see, smell, taste or feel. It's simply a matter of behavior.

A 2-repeat allele of MAOA is something you could target with CRISPR cas-9. Identified and treated very early, we could potentially replace a 2- or 3-repeat allele of MAOA with a 4- or 5-repeat allele of MAOA. That's where you start getting into serious and protracted ethical debates, because the identification of the issue (while politically debatable) and a remedy (technically feasible) is within our grasp--the ethics, and the knowledge of WHY 2-repeat and 3-repeat alleles occurred isn't as well known. The knowledge about why isn't widely studied, in my view, because of racial/ethnic matters and any political implications. My pet theory is that people adapted to environments with very low-amine diets may have been more cognitively functional with a 2- or 3-repeat allele of MAOA. Whereas, in a modern society, high amine diets are common and may adversely affect people in the same way that high sugar diets affect the insulin sensitive, insulin resistant and diabetic populations. If you focused on MAOA knockout people, it would be a freak occurrence of administering a remedy. Probably nobody would disagree. If you focused on people with a 2-repeat allele, you are talking mostly about people with ancestry from Central West Africa--black people. Racism! With a 3-repeat allele, it's a much more mixed population, and the social need isn't as obvious and welfare statists would not want to reduce the need for their services and thus put themselves out of work. Where people freak out is that if you even talk about it as an OPTION, some people can only see the world in totalitarian terms. Murray Gell-Mann's theorem: that which is not prohibited is compulsory.

So there are some specific genes and alleles associated with certain behavior traits. CRISPR cas-9 can identify specific genes and replace them. The Brave New World is near...


PS: your second post lost all your responses. That's an issue with phpBB and a syntax error. Sometimes it's easier to respond in a text editor and post your response; otherwise, all your well thought out retorts can get lost in the mix. Happened to me numerous times... :(
#15055593
blackjack21 wrote:I'm thinking in marketing terms--who's the market? You know an interesting one would be the very wealthy. Older wealthy people are always interested in aging. Now consider the ethical implications of a welfare state. A welfare state would be fine with Mike Bloomberg, Donald Trump and Mitt Romney looking to extend their lives by modifying genes associated to aging; however, they'd pay for it themselves. If it were proposed for Medicare and it extended people's lives even 2-3 years, it could destroy Medicare and Social Security budgets overnight.


I don't believe in a collective utopia, nor the whiggish/progressive view of a one directional march toward everything getting "better." Were native Americans poor or rich? Sophisticated, or "noble savages"? History has seen the collapse of the Greek, Roman, Mongolian and Chinese empires. We've seen conflicts between the iron age Celts and the Roman classical civilization, and then seen Rome fall and a resumption of Dark Age/Middle Age life. Living most of my life in California, I'm seeing right now the effects of a substantial regression and the absurdness of modern law as it tries to grapple with the situation. For example, I can take a shit on the sidewalk and shoot up heroin in front of a cop in San Francisco while both acts are patently illegal and nothing will happen to me, but if I drive while talking on my cell phone and hurt nobody I will get a $950 fine and it will be enforced. That's the paradox of modern civilization run by capitalist progressives, leftists and "woke" people. I don't see that being sustainable, and why I relish watching Nancy Pelosi melt down like the Wicked Witch of the West in the Wizard of Oz. However, what replaces the welfare state when it collapses? Probably something like feudalism again. It won't be pretty, but it already isn't pretty.

So are we talking about genetic engineering or political science? You seem to conflate the two quite a lot, and you use "we" as though a collective decision would be made about everything. We haven't made a collective decision that we're going to make 10% of our population alcoholics and heroin addicts, for example. We don't all agree that we're each going to drink two coca colas today. There are a lot of choices that happen without a collective decision.

As a computer head, it's much easier for me to simply abandon the notion of equality for an abstraction like dignity. I certainly understand the appeal to rationalism. However, I see the concept of "equality" in political terms as becoming problematic, because it forces looking at the world in a certain way that doesn't necessarily capture the essence of the world as it is and progressives and socialists do not seem to like to be limited in scope. In formal logic, the opposite of equality is inequality. It's not necessarily ordinal--greater than or less than. Yet, that's precisely the argument I get each time I indicate that I'm no longer an egalitarian, but still a libertarian. There is a presumption that if you don't see equality, you must see an ordinal rank rather than a series of inequalities.

Genes aren't as well understood as we would like them to be, but that is changing and it's changing very rapidly. It makes people very uncomfortable to even discuss such notions.

When Obama was president and was constantly trolling people on race (face it, he was as much a troll as Trump is), I found it entertaining to bring up The Bell Curve, precisely because academia refused to debate it seriously and simply used what Clinton acolytes called "The Politics of Personal Destruction" to trash Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein along with the research they predicated the book upon. The Bell Curve was not a thesis that said, "White people are smarter than black people." It was a book that was arguing that ditching vocational training (something that is now politically acceptable to discuss as Marco Rubio and Steve Bullock have shown, provided IQ or race is not mentioned anywhere) and trying to force everyone to go to college was not sound policy, because people were not equally equipped intellectually for graduate and post-graduate academic work. Herrnstein died not too long after the book was published, but Murray revisited the topic--this time omitting race altogether in a book called "Coming Apart"--addressing inequality among whites in America. Many other works have shown deep segregation in society based not upon race, but upon intelligence levels. Income distribution graphs overlay IQ distribution graphs very nicely. Conversely, people with serious social problems overlay people with low IQ very nicely as well.

I remember arguing this years ago, whether it was rates of sexually transmitted disease or violent crime rates, these distributions were the unmistakable central tendency--again, not absolute, not a ignoring outliers, etc. Just a central tendency.

Since intelligence is such a complex subject, it does not lend itself easily to this discussion. It's been shown that intelligence is a strongly heritable trait. There are over 50 genes identified with strong correlations to intelligence, which is too complex to hash out on a phpBB site. Yet, some genes have been shown to be linked with particular biologic functions and behavior patterns. For example, the Monoamine Oxidase A gene (MAOA) shows a high degree of anti-social behavior in people with a knock out of the gene and in people with the 2-repeat allele, and a somewhat more attenuated, environment influenced tendency toward anti-social behavior in people with a 3-repeat allele. That's not seen in people with a 4- or 5-repeat allele.

Knockout of the MOAO gene is an extreme outlier. I believe it was identified in a Dutch family, who were impossibly violent rapists who attacked police, etc. Yet, it's an extreme outlier. In African-American populations, it's upwards of 5.5% of their population. It's almost unheard of in whites and Asians. Among the more environment-influential 3-repeat allele of MAOA, about 55% of African-Americans have a 3-repeat allele, and about 33% of white Americans do--I'd have to go back and look that up for exact statistics if the "woke" people haven't scrubbed all of the studies from the internet. This 3-repeat case is interesting, because this is where social welfare demonstrates an influence in attenuating anti-social behavior--something that progressives, socialists, leftists, egalitarians, whatever you want to call them want to be true of ALL people. Yet, it's not. So in some people, social welfare policies simply aren't going to help. Having a 2-repeat allele of MAOA doesn't automatically make you a criminal; however, in pubescent and adult males until, oh, about 40 or so, they are dramatically more likely to have been detained and/or incarcerated by the police if they have a 2-repeat allele of MAOA, and it's not even close--I mean like 80% more likely. The police aren't even close to smart enough to do genetic profiling--it's not something they can see, smell, taste or feel. It's simply a matter of behavior.

A 2-repeat allele of MAOA is something you could target with CRISPR cas-9. Identified and treated very early, we could potentially replace a 2- or 3-repeat allele of MAOA with a 4- or 5-repeat allele of MAOA. That's where you start getting into serious and protracted ethical debates, because the identification of the issue (while politically debatable) and a remedy (technically feasible) is within our grasp--the ethics, and the knowledge of WHY 2-repeat and 3-repeat alleles occurred isn't as well known. The knowledge about why isn't widely studied, in my view, because of racial/ethnic matters and any political implications. My pet theory is that people adapted to environments with very low-amine diets may have been more cognitively functional with a 2- or 3-repeat allele of MAOA. Whereas, in a modern society, high amine diets are common and may adversely affect people in the same way that high sugar diets affect the insulin sensitive, insulin resistant and diabetic populations. If you focused on MAOA knockout people, it would be a freak occurrence of administering a remedy. Probably nobody would disagree. If you focused on people with a 2-repeat allele, you are talking mostly about people with ancestry from Central West Africa--black people. Racism! With a 3-repeat allele, it's a much more mixed population, and the social need isn't as obvious and welfare statists would not want to reduce the need for their services and thus put themselves out of work. Where people freak out is that if you even talk about it as an OPTION, some people can only see the world in totalitarian terms. Murray Gell-Mann's theorem: that which is not prohibited is compulsory.

So there are some specific genes and alleles associated with certain behavior traits. CRISPR cas-9 can identify specific genes and replace them. The Brave New World is near...


PS: your second post lost all your responses. That's an issue with phpBB and a syntax error. Sometimes it's easier to respond in a text editor and post your response; otherwise, all your well thought out retorts can get lost in the mix. Happened to me numerous times... :(


Well BJ, I had a series of things that derailed my attention for a few days.

I got to give this last post of yours some reflection and time. I hope I can do it after Christmas and come back to it.

For me? We have a very limited time on earth, and got to decide how are we going to live our lives. Working with the human potential and making our society and ourselves better or trying to improve daily. Or lamenting our existences and thinking most of us will never respond to change. Or to love.

For me it is easy BJ. You love and you give and you love and you learn, and you do and you are.....and you become the best example of a species you are a part of. What is being humane?

For me? Within my cultural framework the collective is very very important. It doesn't negate individuality or unique talents or latent potentialities. You must realize that dialectics and contradictions in human life are common things.

Genes dictate everything? They never did. For me environments are all about change and adaptation. Many possible options and you are there responding to it. Nature made that endless creativity for a reason. It is because the very nature of life is that....endless possibilities. That is why fighting differences and thinking that the space between them is insurmountable is really a very big error on any human's part. We are all in the same....material...the iron is pumping through our hearts....the iron that says.....yes, we are all there, following the laws of nature. To think that somehow the differences makes us not really able to cope with cooperative and sophisticated sharing of resources because we must be selfish and power hungry by design? No. That is the lie BJ.

It all comes out in the wash.

More time to talk after Christmas.

Relampaguito. Don't spend too much time on dystopia and the horrors of the less than superior. Lol. No es para tanto.

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