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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   27486 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 28, 2025

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Well, as someone who is highly in favour of this technology being available, I can only hope that the entanglement between the Trump administration and the Thiel/Musk corner of the grey tribe is still strong enough that the Republicans will not be able to mount any coherent opposition to this.

Gattaca is ultimately still a movie, and it had to engage in significant narrative gymnastics to contrive a scenario in which the viewer would be primed to oppose the putative technology. Spoiler, the physical requirements manned spaceflight programmes impose on their astronauts are already unattainable for the vast majority of people. You could have written much of the same plot with no embryonic selection technology involved at all; the only role it plays in the movie is that it lends an element of alien scientific certainty to the judgement, like how people are more comfortable with "faceless bureaucrat rejected your application for credit after looking at your file for 10 seconds" than "AI rejected your application for credit".

Also the main character has a fatal heart condition and says he has a 99% chance of heart failure with a few years. He collapses clutching his chest partway through the film. He is entirely medically unqualified to go on a multiyear space program.

The central point of the film is the opposite of what was intended. They would be right to reject him.

This is just my head cannon (I think), but I always interpreted his terrible heart condition as just him having a normal human heart and not a eugenically selected überheart.

They explain given the state of his heart he probably won't live to see his 32nd birthday. I interpret that as a real issue.

What kind of eugenics does it take to get a head cannon?

I believe the term of art is "skull gun".

None, just mosey on down to the Leased Territories for some quick outpatient surgery.

No eugenics, but you need to write an email to Joseph Manderley.

I enjoy Gattaca but I also agree that 'Key member of a long spaceflight being at significant risk of heart failure' is something that'd disqualify you right now without looking at your genetic code. The plot would probably feel better if it were pure genemod-bias at play.

For all the hype of the selection process for the first astronaut class --- The Right Stuff is a fantastic movie --- I don't think the current process is anywhere near as physically rigorous. They're probably still fit relative to the populace, but it's no longer quite the standard of perfection they started with. Deke Slayton of the Mercury 7 was grounded at the time for a minor heart issue, but got to fly later, and John Glenn was pretty old (77) when he flew again on the Space Shuttle in 1998.

The original flights had to work, right? They were America's way of showing superiority to the Russians and to Communism. Now that it's just another tour of service, albeit an unusual one, I'm not surprised standards have been relaxed.

The combination of better automation, simpler missions (and in particular not going behind the Moon and therefore potentially having to carry out manoeuvres while out of comms with Earth) and more payload meant that the Shuttle could afford to carry passengers in a way that earlier missions could not.

Early space suits were very hard to work in because constant-volume flexible pressure vessels are hard. This has gotten better, but isn't a fully solved problem. In much the same way that early aircraft required large forces on the controls (flying a B-17 I'm told is an arm workout on a good day, doubly so when the trim settings are damaged). It doesn't take a serious bodybuilder to fly an Airbus today, though.

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