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While the Sweeney jeans add is clearly an overreaction to fake eugenics downthread, it does seem like real, hard, embryo selection eugenics is here, or at least right around the corner. Scott Alexander's article released yesterday, Suddenly, Trait-Based Embryo Selection, says:
The gist of the article is that while the science is still in its infancy and there are a lot of challenges to overcome, these companies are not just selling vaporware. There's real embryo selection based on traits happening, that is going to be significant for babies being born now.
Of course this article is just another confirmation of science fiction becoming reality, but it's still shocking to see from my perspective. You'd think we would at least have a discussion as to whether this should be legal or not, but unfortunately given how crippled out legislative apparatus is, tech companies continue to just push ahead with zero fear of regulatory change. They're willing to take the risk.
Now I personally have religious reasons to oppose this sort of intervention, but even if you don't, it's not hard to imagine the insane societal consequences of allowing free for all designer babies. As one hyperbolic comment on the slate star subreddit says:
While this comment is pretty over the top, I still think there's a strong point here! Gattaca was a cautionary tale, not a user's manual. Then again, I suppose the general zeitgeist considers the prole class to be so whipped, and coddled with bread and circuses, that our materialistic transhumanist tech overlords can simply do whatever they want, even if it will end up condemning "natural-born" people to permanent servitude.
The culture war lines here would've been pretty clear a while ago, but now it's muddled. Will the religious right be able to turn their coalition against this? Will the left see this as inequality on steroids? Will an uneasy alliance be made to ban this technology from the light of day? Only time will tell.
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".
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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