First, I appreciate the effort you put into your reply. I will respond with equal effort. I will say upfront we are unlikely to agree, but we might aspire to at least improve our understanding of one another's positions.
”Your premise seems to start from the point that you know exactly what a human being is, or what life is in and of itself.”
Your premise seems to be that science has no answers to these questions. In fact a great deal has been written about what constitutes life (homeostasis, self-replication, etc.) As for what constitutes a human, I know one when I see one, and worry for the sanity of anyone who doesn’t.
”You seem to have no doubt about the ability to create, shape, influence human life through genetics to ensure the continuation of the human species, yet doubt is the very basis in science.”
Indeed, so let us turn that perspective back on your own reasoning. Do we need to know everything about the human organism in order to make constructive modifications to it? Your position might be characterized as the genetic equivalent of Chesterton’s Fence. Can there be such a thing as an objectively best hair color, eye color, skin color, height, weight and so on? Of course not.
However the very fact that you’re reading this on a computer, from within a climate controlled dwelling no more than a hundred feet from a fridge full of food vindicates me. Very obviously, we owe nearly every improvement to the averaged quality of life during the past several centuries to human intellect.
Probably we can never agree about what humans ought to look like, as that is a matter of taste. But if you are reasonable and honest we should be able to agree that the correction of all hereditary illness and increasing our intelligence could only be for the best.
”As you are unable to define exactly what a human being is and what life is, I would take your statements for what they seem to me to be: the expression of exaggerated fear and resistance to one's own certain death.”
It is amazing how consistently, like clockwork, allistics misunderstand me because they deeply assume everybody’s reasoning to be ego driven, and that there are no exceptions to this. I do not think you have met many autistic persons. But then, isn’t this a fallacy anyways? Shifting critical focus to the person making the argument, rather than addressing the argument itself?
”I interpret your lines as a form of self-loathing, dressed in great eloquence and intelligence. I attribute this to a form of one's own experienced past, in which sexual permissiveness was suppressed by someone in one's environment. The church and all its extensions, which were eventually also grounded in science, still seem to be a very strong influencing factor based on the guilt and original sin attributed to man.”
I am not gay if that’s what you mean. Not that it wouldn’t be a valid reason to oppose the church, if you're projecting here and you are, yourself a gay person. In all respects except the wiring of my brain and the beliefs I hold, I am western Christianity’s ideal human. I interpret your lines as armchair psychology, as a means of avoiding addressing the substance of my arguments.
”Presumably no scientist holding a well-paid job as such would even remotely admit that his own cultural background gives him various blind spots that contradict his "objective science".
You are much less likely to distance yourself from those who you say would meet you with sudden silence or you would have broken a taboo. The signs of the times rather indicate that this topic will soon no longer be taboo either. Perhaps you are just not included in the circle of those who speak the same language as you.”
If I have such blind spots, I invite you to illuminate them. So far your arguments have consisted of “maybe you are gay”, “nobody can say what a human is” and armchair psychiatry as a substitute for addressing the substance of my arguments.
”I interpret that you have a very negative image of human beings and speculate that your personal experiences promoted this bad image of human beings instead of relativising it.
I don't worry in the least whether "our genetic material is giving us an increase in people who are unfit to live". Your text wants me to see it otherwise and share the worries.”
You’re welcome to be unconcerned. Plenty of people, likewise, are unconcerned about climate change. The implications of what solving such an enormous problem would require make it more comfortable to stick their heads in the sand. But in doing so, they bear some responsibility for the consequences of it. Likewise, if you mean to actively oppose efforts at making CRISPR commercially available, you accept responsibility for the suffering of future generations with conditions it might’ve prevented prior to their birth.
”We have seen such allegedly altruistic behaviour of "putting the ego beneath the good of the many" in the last years, haven't we?”
Yes, I did mention eugenics. That would be a reasonable fear, had I proposed any sort of government intervention in this matter. I didn’t though. What I proposed as a solution is simply making CRISPR commercially available. That would be voluntary, solving all problems of consent. Nobody would be killed or sterilized. If you still take issue with such a reproductive service, I wonder what your view of Planned Parenthood is.
”In fact, I fear such arguments and claims as yours more than what you seem to fear. This puts our two fears in competition and the desire for one to dominate or win over the other seems to me to be the real problem.”
On what grounds would you constrain individual freedom to make use of reproductive services, such as Planned Parenthood or a hypothetical commercialized CRISPR service? There is much to fear from men who want the government to intrude into such primal and intimate human functions as reproduction, because they would take away essential freedoms. I do not propose to take away anyone’s freedoms, but to expand them. What about you?
”Where culture becomes a cult ("Save the planet, save humanity!") I see madness, while you may see reason. Which announces a struggle and where majorities turn against minorities without really knowing who is the minority or majority. The talk of a minority taking advantage of the majority, and vice versa, obscures the fact that unity "across the planet" cannot be achieved and only the controlling attempt to achieve it leads to further problems. In order to make unity attractive, you have to use the picture that "a threat of unimaginable consequences is hovering over humanity, yet man doesn't see it."
”You seem to know what humans are. I argue that you know not. For me, humans are in the same way fabulous and impressive as they can be egocentric and mad.”
Is there a human who can survive immersion in magma? Is there a human who can be frozen solid and recover? Is there a human who can survive unaided in the vacuum of space for 24 hours, or who can survive in the core of a nuclear reactor? In fact, isn’t it true that the range of survivable temperatures, pressures and radiation exposure for humans is well known and without exception?
Physiologically, humans are quantifiable, whatever you might say about the ineffable nature of our minds and how we express our subjective experience. Humans are not magic, we are material, we are understandable through science. Nothing prevents exerting editorial control over our own genome and while we cannot agree on trivial specifics like appearance, we should all be able to agree that a healthier, smarter humanity is objectively desirable.
”Instead of taking this circuitous and justifiably controversial path of influence right at the beginning of human life, I suggest that you take a closer look at the freedom to express yourself musically, artistically and in dance. A much easier way to counter your feared degeneration of humanity. Instead of wallowing in the horror that could still await "us".
Should we also immerse ourselves in artistic escapism rather than take steps to remedy climate change? What's the harm in giving ourselves an escape hatch from the trajectory we're on, in case you're wrong?
RE: Mutational Load is as Dangerous a Long-Term Threat as Climate Change. Why Can’t We Discuss it?