I don't trust humans, sorry. It's the reason Christianity never got me (I can't trust in who wrote those words in the Bible, because it was a series of men). And it's the reason I can't trust these scientists to not screw something up.
That's not an answer to the question. Here it is again: Wouldn't a sentient being capable of "knowing" by definition "know better" than something that doesn't "know" at all? Your presence on this forum and apparent satisfaction with the technology you employ to achieve that presence would lead one to suspect that your trust of any particular group of scientists is arbitrary.
You're assuming the sentient being "knows" and nature doesn't. What if both don't "know"? If misplaced, my trust in the functionality of the technology I'm employing to communicate with you has different consequences than my trust in the functioning of the technology involved in genetic tweaking. I'm not being arbitrary, I'm prioritizing according to what I think affects my survival.
I assumed nothing. I asked a question. Twice now. Both times you have dissembled, choosing to wave your hands rather than answer what to most people would be a straightforward query. Look, you can answer it or not. Either way, I really don't care that much. But all you end up demonstrating here is the classic conceptual insecurity of those whose ideas are fundamentally incoherent. If you are not confident enough in your beliefs to engage honestly in the back and forth of this sort of debate, that's no surprise to anyone. I will ask a third time, just to see if you might briefly develop the intellectual backbone to answer it: Wouldn't a sentient being capable of "knowing" by definition "know better" than something that doesn't "know" at all? The technology of embryonic "genetic tweaking" does not and cannot effect you at all. You have already been born. Your genetic legacy is pretty much set in stone at this point. More and more what I gather from your posts is that you "prioritize" primarily based on irrational but largely inchoate fear. Your pathos laden efforts to defend that fear have been based on nothing that resembles an effective understanding of your own objections. Your bizarre and brief appeal to "morality" proved to be essentially a pump-fake. For some reason, completely unclear at this point, you have a fear of a certain technology. My mom was afraid of spiders.
Perhaps the idea here is that people dont necessarily think things thru before meddling. The army corps of engineers have made a hash, often enough, of water systems that were working a lot better before they were improved.
the genetically altered child will grow and marry and have children. How sure are we that a few generations down the road this won't produce some mutant child, for lack of articulation I use the term loosely .. now lets say you are a woman and you produce this child with some defect that was never before seen. You find out that your husband's great grandfather was genetically altered and somehow that science went wrong and is not done anymore and now this is why. Do you get to sue ? Or is their statute of limitations protecting the companies doing the Franken Babies.
I'll take a stab at this one. Only a sentient being can "know" in the sense of cognate. But nature doesn't need to "think" in order to produce a superior product. It is a highly tested, refined process, which has proven itself, that nature brings to the table. What does man bring? Reverse engineering.
True. But is that an argument against meddling? From the first moment we stripped the leaves off a twig to fish for termites, we were meddling. Our entire march from vulnerable savannah ape to the dominant large vertebrate in the solar system has been as a result of our meddling. Both meddling and failing to meddle have untended consequences. Working differently certainly. But working "better?" Better how? Doesn't that judgment necessarily require a risk benefit review of everything it accomplished? And does that also not require certain assumptions on what might have otherwise happened without their meddling? When we "meddle," it's not exactly a zero sum game, you know. The Army Corps of Engineers has made a hash of some things, sure. They also built the Panama Canal. Do we stop attempting to do great things because of an inchoate fear that something (who knows what) could go wrong?
We can be absolutely certain that a few generations down the road pretty much everybody (who has any descendents at all) will produce a mutant child. This is regardless of whether or not any prior genetic engineering took place. If so, that would be an argument for tort reform, not an argument to avoid genetic engineering.
Tell that to the 99% of all living things and 90% of all species that were wiped out during the Permian extinction. It is absurd... almost comical to refer to nature's product as "superior" when such a value judgment can only be made from the perspective of human self interest. Get more than a few miles off the surface of the earth and all of creation mocks the hubris of any human being trying to pigeonhole anything in nature (to include our own works) as superior or inferior.
And you think man made species would have fared better? Since we don't really know what what caused the extinction, that conclusion would be hard to reach logically. So, since it's hubris for humans to even label anything as superior or inferior, obviously we don't know enough to be screwing around with it. How much more hubris is that?
No. Please, save the straw for the cattle. That said, there can be little doubt that they would have fared no worse. My point was that the "excellence" of nature's "product" is an illusion of scale. Like sausages and laws, the end product appears so wonderful only when one is ignorant of the process it took to get there. It would be nearly impossible for anyone to knowledgeably make a case for nature's efficiency, economy, perspicacity or final quality. Because it 1) is constrained by contingent history and 2) confers success using standards along the line of the old joke about hikers trying to outrun a bear, nature has ultimately delivered to us "designs" so suboptimal and absurd that no intelligent designer would have produced them. But nature does not care about perfection; nature deals exclusively with "good enough." As a degreed engineer myself, I have no problem looking at (for just one example) the human eye and judging it an awful design. And I could improve on that design without requiring the slaughter of countless generations of individuals to get there. There are unintended consequences for everything we do starting with getting up in the morning. They have never been a good reason to stay in bed. Ignoring that it really doesn't matter what caused it, I can only note that in this thread you're the only one of us pretending that conclusion has actually been reached. We certainly know enough to be screwing around with it, as evidenced by the fact that we can screw around with it. And in final measure, it is ultimately no different than a beaver damming a stream. That you viscerally feel squeamish about crossing some arbitrary line is entirely on you. About the same. Welcome to the human condition.
And yet those in this thread opposed to such "meddling" have made no effort at rationally proposing relevant "whats" and "hows." And a lot of improvements have been improvements by any standards. A statement of the obvious is not an argument either way. An American version of the earlier British "going off at half-(*)(*)(*)(*)." But fine... we can settle halfway between evaluating all results and evaluating just one. My point remains made. You cannot generally judge overall the "goodness" or "badness" of an action based on a single consequence considered in vacuum. What a bizarre response. No. We don't. It wasn't a rhetorical question. I expected an actual answer.
So you'd say that the placental mammals won out because they were "adaptive"? Something doesnt sound right there.
What does that even mean? "Win out?" Placentals are currently prevalent on several continents entirely because of contingent history. Both general designs were adaptive as evidenced by the fact that both designs have existed for long periods of time. They are simply different. Is it reasonable to say, for example that mammals "won out" over the dinosaurs? The dinosaurs were exquisitely adapted. But now, all that remains of them are the birds. Stretch the concept even further. Is it reasonable to say that mammals "won out" over the trilobites? Trilobites once ruled the seas... at a time when there were no land animals at all. Now they're gone, and mammals aren't. No living mammal ever met a living trilobite. But what does that actually tell us about which is "better" than the other? We would never have survived on the seafloor. Trilobites would never have survived on the savannah. One is different from the other. Neither is obviously better. All living organisms have genealogies of equal antiquity. A Koala is no obviously better adapted for feeding on eucalyptus than a sponge is adapted for feeding on seafloor detritus. Your compulsion to try and impose human concepts of success and failure on nature can lad only to madness. That's because your premise is false. Nature does not care one whit about "winners" or "losers."
We don't know that. There were still many species who survived, so it wasn't a total failure. Hmm, are you saying that there's no such thing as an excellent sausage or an excellent law? Ignorance of the process of creation does not mean that we cannot appreciate the final product and judge it based on its merits. Nature's final quality can be judged by the fact that it is still here. Has the process been brutal? Certainly. But we (living creatures) have been strengthened by this trial of fire. You're the one who brought up the Permian extinction to try to show how nature sucks. If you weren't saying that genetic engineering is better, than what were you even comparing? How can you say it's "bad design" without reference to a better one? And it's very important WHY the event happened, because while you might say it was bad or unadaptable design if creatures couldn't survive climate change, it's pretty hard to blame design if a meteor suddenly makes the place uninhabitable one day. Yeah, give a monkey a wrench and he's now a mechanic. You yourself have admitted it is hubris. One SHOULD be squeamish about engaging in hubris. To to otherwise is to be foolish and megalomaniacal.
If you insist on wildly moving the goalposts, why have goalposts at all? If the standard has now suddenly become whether or not something is a "total failure" you have essentially eviscerated every objection voiced so far in this thread regarding human intervention in the environment. Even our worst screw-ups have rarely been "total failures." But back on the point, to insist that "we don't know that" is to discount everything we do know of biological history on this planet, especially the geometry of mass extinctions. Mass extinctions are where the "rules" regarding adaptation are overwhelmed by an environment which has changed too suddenly and too drastically for natural selection to track. Survival of any individual or any species is effectively random, and ecological systems are disassembled in detail. Whatever is left is whatever is left. Once the proximate cause of the extinction is ameliorated, there can be no serious value judgment regarding any differential "fitness" of the remaining species. Whatever characteristics allowed them to survive the event are irrelevant moving forward into the new adaptive radiation. As life history shows, it doesn't matter (for example) whether what survived is a fish, a reptile, a mammal or a bird. All are adequate for ultimately filling the same ecological niche. In the identical way... it would not have mattered whether what survived was genetically engineered or not. Whatever was left would be whatever was left. And whatever followed would not care one way or the other. We can judge anything we want any way we want as long as we do not place any expectations on whether or not those judgments are actually meaningful. But if you want the judgment to be meaningful you must have standards with which to judge them. In the comparison of natural vs. artificial origin, understanding the process is necessary to that judgment. Else you run the risk of praising Mussolini because the trains run on time. Rocks are still here too. What does that have to do with their "quality?" But more to the point, you persist in holding an imaginary understanding of nature and evolution that does not square with the reality. It is the source of most of your error that rather than understanding reality on its own terms, you instead insist on filtering it through an erroneous mental template. It is an age old problem that has its roots in the age old but almost uniquely Western conception of ourselves as "The beauty of the world! The paragon of animals! " We want very much to believe that we are the ultimate "objective of creation." It was received knowledge for millennia that our existence actually was the purpose of the universe, and we had the exclusive monotheisms of Christianity and Islam to enforce and spread that conception at sword-point. But all of scientific history has been one blow after another to that belief. First, Copernicus dethroned the earth as the literal center of the universe. Then Darwin cut the legs out from under our self conception of at least being separate and distinct from "the animals." One of the last gasps of our self delusion is the desperate hope that somehow evolution is at least directional towards "excellence" or "superiority." That we stand at the top rung of a "ladder of life" on which all living things are arranged in a progression from "primitive to advanced," or "simple to complex." It is a pleasant fiction, but a fiction none the less. Because that is not what earth history records. So when you write, "But we (living creatures) have been strengthened by this trial of fire," one can only shake his head at the silliness of the assertion. Some organisms have been strengthened, some have been weakened. Some have been made faster, some have been made slower. Some have grown larger, some smaller. There is no direction. There is no progression. There is no "better and worse." There is no excellent and inadequate. There is only adaptation. And a human being is no more or less adapted than the tapeworm that eats us from the inside. Please, again, save the straw for the cattle. I have never asserted that nature sucks. I find nature to be remarkable. But my attitude towards nature is different from yours at least two different ways. First, I consider human beings to actually be nothing more or less than just another part of nature. What makes the Great Wall of China qualitatively different from a beaver damn? Nothing other than arbitrary human self importance. And second, I just don't consider it "sacred." It is a resource for us to use for our own self interest, just as every other living thing on the planet uses it as a resource for theirs. I'm not comparing. You are. I am asserting that such comparisons are bogus. By assuming first that you knew enough to follow along, and second by choosing not to launch into any more of a threadjack. I'm happy to discuss the bad design of the human eye along with comprehensive references to better ones. Start a thread, and I'll probably play. You make my argument for me. Thereby restoring the playing field to level. I always knew it was hubris and accounted for it. You are the one who had to be educated on the fact. You are certainly the one of us with the greatest blind spot regarding. To be careful is rational and thoughtful. To be squeamish is intuitive and emotional. If your objective is to prevent foolishness and megalomany, you should join me in the former and leave the latter for the mystics and metaphysicians.
I'm not sure what goal you are trying to score, but when I said that it wasn't a total failure, it was in response to your statement, "there can be little doubt that they would have fared no worse." I was challenging that statement by saying that there was indeed room to do worse. And through all of it, what kept life going on this planet? Diversity. The different varieties of life attacked the problem of survival in so many different ways that a few made it. But genetic tweaking will mean less genetic diversity, as most people would pick the same few genes which have obvious traits (like blue eyes) they are looking for, without understanding the full implications of the gene. Again, monkeys with wrenches are not mechanics, let alone engineers. Or maybe NO genetically engineered creatures would survive. Nature has proven it can make it through those tough times, GE has not. Some judgements have simple criteria. Is the natural process still running millions of years later? Check. Can genetic engineering match that? We don't know. Well, they would be lousy rocks if they just evaporated, wouldn't they? Adaptation IS strengthening! And I never said that humans sit on the top rung of life, or that a human is more adapted than a tapeworm. When I said, "But we (living creatures) have been strengthened by this trial of fire", I was clear that I wasn't just talking about humans. Save the straw. And yes, organisms may have gotten smaller or larger, and traded off certain strengths for others. That's what happens when you adapt. You may see it as a lateral move because of the opportunity costs, but the adapted creature gains more suitable attributes than it loses. Your whole diversion into the Permian extinction was an attempt to show nature inadequate (i.e. sucky). Not really interested, but the fact that you would "discuss the bad design of the human eye along with comprehensive references to better ones" is just evidence for what I said: "How can you say it's "bad design" without reference to a better one?" Obviously you agree. You make my argument for me. Ha! I did not need you to "educate" me that it is hubris. That was my original position. So how have you "accounted" for it? I used the word squeamish because that was how you characterized it. But, yes, what I am actually proposing is to act carefully.
The word for that would exactly be adaptive. And if you were paying closer attention you would have noted that displacements went both ways. The primary reason it appears lopsided is that when the Panamanian land bridge was formed, it was established in a tropical zone which extended further into South America than it did into North America, so the capacity of organisms (not just mammals) to expand into new ranges where they had no established predators was greater in the south. This is an accident of geography, and has nothing to do with any particular "superiority" of placentals over marsupials. Had the geographic details been reversed, we would be talking about how the marsupials invaded North America instead.* I have no idea what you are talking about,. If you cannot actually respond to my comments, then don't respond. An ironic tantrum does you no credit. That is the argument we are having. I have parsed your argument and diagnosed the proximate cause of its illegitimacy. You can learn from the insight or not. That's entirely up to you. No, it's not. The word for it is adaptive because that is the appropriate word. Your false premise leads not to the correct word ("adaptive") but to the erroneously imposed and wildly inappropriate human concepts of "winning," and "superiority." Then to be consistent you should be equally reticent to project on concepts (they're not even "things") value laden human conventions like winning or losing. Not at all. It is a matter of actuality vs. metaphor. All living individuals (the only level at which concepts of winning or losing make sense) meet the same eventual fate. The only difference is whether or not before death they managed to pass on a genetic legacy. What good that does the individual (in any sense resembling "winning") is fairly vacuous. But a species cannot win or lose because outside of its convenience as a conceptual category for human consideration, a species is not a "thing." It is a not an entity. It does not "exist." To declare one species a victor over another is the rhetorical equivalent of declaring one type of star victorious over another type just because they have more hydrogen or because there are more of them. Sure, if for no other reason than it's pretty stupid to consider it a "competition" of any sort when one competitor weighs about 1.5 pounds and the other weighs 100 times as much. But put up Diarthrognathus against a ferret, and there is no objective reason why even money should not be on Diarthrognathus. You are again caught in the objectively false belief that modern mammals are somehow superior to ancient mammal-like reptiles because the change from one to the other must necessarily reflect "progress." But evolution is not about "progress." It is about adaptation. Mammals are not in any objective way an improvement on mammal-like reptiles. They are just different. The topology of evolution is not the ladder, but the bush. Who is to declare one leaf superior over another? But more to the point, there is no reason to believe any head to head competition would ever occur in the first place. The "competition for survival" is a metaphor, not a statement of actuality. Must ecosystems will have multiple apex predators, each capable of coexisting because... get ready for it... they are adapted to subtly different niches. Even for those where competition is obvious and vicious (think lions and hyenas) different adaptations afford room for both. And in many ecosystems, almost identically adapted organisms (think different South American monkeys) will coexist simply through the act of keeping to themselves at different levels of the forest canopy. Your grasp of the relevant issues necessary to hold your own in this discussion could use some work. * Among the mammals that happened to do very well in the exchange were marsupials like the Opossum which even managed to extend into temperate zones.
More straw. Whoever pretended that there was no room to do worse? Hold that thought. Gong. That was an equivocation of such stupendous magnitude that one gong is not enough. Gong!!!! The phenotypic diversity between species is a completely different thing from the genetic diversity within a species. But more to the point, every natural act of adaptation reduces genetic diversity in exactly the same way that artificial "genetic tweaking" does; it eliminates alleles that are maladaptive to the immediate circumstance. Natural selection has no crystal ball. It cannot anticipate what might happen the next day, or the next year, or the next millennium. It cannot plan. It cannot anticipate. It acts. Now. And if a gene is maladaptive now, it gets eliminated now. The choice of a human to eliminate a gene now that would otherwise result in, say, multiple sclerosis now with no consideration of what that might induce 50 generations is exactly the same thing that natural selection does. Neither has the magic gift of precognition. Maybe humans will evolve wings and gills. Wild speculation for which there exists no good reason is not an argument. If the criteria are silly, the judgment is trivial. If the criteria are both silly and selected specifically to stack the deck for the purpose of reaching a desired conclusion, the judgement is both trivial and deceptive. Not for any obvious reason, no. No... it is not. Adaptation has nothing necessarily to do with strength at all. An adaptive advantage in one environment can quickly become an adaptive disadvantage in another. To make assertions such as "Adaptation IS strengthening!" is a complete conceptual face-plant. It demonstrates essentially no genuine understanding of adaptation whatsoever. Again, almost nothing in this paragraph reflects a command of the actual conceptual underpinnings of evolutionary adaptation. The mention of tapeworms was meant to be a hint, but instead of getting it you doubled down on your conceptual error. Tapeworms evolved from independent, free living Platyhelminthe worms. To become what they are today, they adapted by losing attributes, not gaining them. The very attempt by you to introduce the concept of "a lateral move" betrays the template within which you view the entire idea... as a process of progress from less to more, with "lateral" moves seen as some sort of rare exception. It is a view of evolution that has been rejected by most evolutionary scientists since Darwin himself. The evidence of the natural world declares it to be false. No. It was not. It was an attempt to show that your conception of nature's excellence was an illusion. Nature is perfectly adequate. Perhaps you should go back and reread the thread. If that was your original position, you did a very effective job of concealing it. No. You have proposed to not act at all.
You, when you said, "there can be little doubt that they would have fared no worse." If there was not much worse that could be done, you would have a point. However, since that is not the case, there can be much doubt. I just pointed out another possibility in your own speculative fantasy. But of course the criteria I used, survival, is the most non-trivial of things. Without that, any other judgements of worthiness in anything are irrelevant. Anything coming to mind now? I wasn't using the term strength in a "how much do you bench" sort of way. I was talking about how equipped a creature is to succeed in it's ultimate goal - survival - individually but more importantly, collectively. I said YOU might consider it a lateral move, since you are the one keeping tally on gained and lost attributes in such things as a tapeworm. But it doesn't matter if attributes are gained or lost so long as their gain or loss is adaptive. You keep trying to tell me that I have a mistaken concept of evolution based on hierarchies and one thing being "more evolved" than another, but I never said that. Something about straw... OK, so it's not excellent, it's not sucky, it's "OK", that's your position? Not at all. I merely propose to not take one particular action, not "none at all". Eschewing one action in no way means eschewing all action.
