sammysoccer411
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User ID: 2078
sammysoccer411
4mo ago
Why is that exactly? I'm genuinely quite curious.
Just to be clear--you're against gene editing for moral reasons, rather than "we don't know enough and shouldn't mess with it" reasons or something else, yes?
If so, we know of a good number of traits that are influenced by genetics, and generally cause people to live better lives. IQ, self-control, disease risk, general positive vs depressive temperament, etc. Even something like superficial beauty might be slightly positive for society overall. Wouldn't you rather these advantages be accessible to everyone, rather than just those lucky enough?
sammysoccer411
4mo ago
What's any large company (say, over 10,000 people), in any other field than tech, that you positively like? If you're like me, you'd struggle to name one.
The issue here is that human psychology is wired for dealing with people. We like people who are strong and make the right 'I am your ally' sounds, and dislike people who fail these regards. The root of these instincts is evolution--the proto-humans that used these metrics to make the right intra-tribal alliances reproduced--and are thus deeply, deeply, deeply, wired.
An emergent property here is that people tend to really dislike those they find ingenuine. People whom make 'ally' sounds but don't follow through are not just enemies, but resource pits too. In my personal experience, I would say people dislike the ingenuine even more than they dislike pronounced enemies, although a citation is definitely needed here.
A large company can never make 'ally' sounds for too long. The charismatic founder must eventually leave, and profit incentives forever whittle away at any mission state, and there are too many employees for any consensus-making, so eventually all corporations must land, politically, in some spot between 'wishy-washy' and 'generic corporate positivity'.
But does this dislike make corporations 'evil'? I don't think that's entirely fair.
Corporations are amoral. They will always do exactly what leads to greatest increase in stock price, or their c-suite will be sued for not doing so. Amoral might not be 'good', and amoral is very dislikeable, but amoral is not evil.
What, for many, is fantastic about big tech is that it's a true 'nerd meritocracy'. This might be where the reverence you're seeing comes from. Most high-paying fields outside of tech place a high premium on social skills (sales, business, finance, politics, law) or else are not true meritocracies (academia, also law). For the smart but less socially-inclined, big tech broadly is high-paying (strong) and wants to hire people like you ('ally').
sammysoccer411
4mo ago
I don't think aesthetics need to be 'obviously superior' to be a threat, they just need to be socially accepted.
But besides that--yes. Aesthetics have a tremendous impact on many people's politics, so the stronger the alternatives to 'woke aesthetics', the stronger the alternatives to woke politics.
sammysoccer411
5mo ago
One can argue 'monetary value is not use-value'. Sure. But name a better predictor.
In practice, prices are literally--like quite literally and exclusively--the result of billions of people voting with their dollars, based on how much utility they believe item x has. What could be a better predictor average of use-value than every persons' opinions on use-value, averaged out?
Maybe.
It seems to me that this requires the belief that a person is defined by their DNA, either 1. axiomatically, or because 2. the soul exists, and is inextricably linked to one's DNA.
Counterpoint--in the aftermath of Chernobyl and the atomic blasts in Japan, we have empirically witnessed people with tremendous DNA damage survive for several hours or days. Many of them could still talk, express their memories, behave as they always had. Due to the alterations in their DNA, would it be accurate to say that these people were, in fact, entirely different people to what 'they' were before?
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