From: Stuart Armstrong (dragondreaming@googlemail.com)
Date: Sat Sep 27 2008 - 03:40:50 MDT
>Rationally, we should not use medical technology to save lives because it allows weak genes to propagate.
Only if we prefer genes over lives. And genes are not weak, or strong;
genes survive, or they die, when matched up against the environment.
>We oppose human cloning, genetic experiments with embryos, and restricting the right to have children based on fitness tests. Instead, the birth rate is highest among parents with the least education. How do we expect to control the evolution of a superior species if we cannot control our own?
We have controlled our evolution, to a fabulous degree: we've removed
ourselves from it. Darwinian evolution is nearly irrelevant to the
human species. Much of the cut-throat selective pressure has been
removed. And the new selective pressures, culture and technology,
change so fast that evolution doesn't have a chance to keep up.
Unless something changes, the future of human "evolution" is by
conscious searching and designing. Not by the processes of Darwinian
evolution, which are essentially irrelevant to the debate.
(However, see the article "If uploads come first" by Robin Hanson,
describing a scenario in which Darwinian-type evolution returns to the
human species).
Stuart
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