• CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social
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    4 months ago

    I’m not sure I get the universal negativity to this. Like sure, Altman sucks as a person, and an individual having enough money to significantly bankroll research like this is a sign of an economic failure, but surely curing or preventing genetic disease is just about the most uncontroversial use human genetic modification could have?

    • Windex007@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      It’ll only be available for the super rich, will expand to other augmentations/engineering, and will result in further reinforcing social mobility boundaries.

      • CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social
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        4 months ago

        The response to something beneficial being only available to the rich shouldn’t be to avoid developing that thing, it should be to make it available to everyone. The failures of the US healthcare and economic systems don’t suddenly make developing new medical techniques a bad thing. Human augmentation is another issue from curing genetic disease, though I’d personally argue that wouldn’t be a bad cause either, with the same caveat about it availability. It at least has more potential to improve somebody’s life somewhere down the line than just buying a yacht with his ill gotten gains or some other useless rich person toy would.

        • Windex007@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          Generally speaking (by theory subscription), moral evaluations of an action consider the state of the agent.

          “Is this a good technology?” And “Is Sam Altman doing good?” Are two radically different questions with radically different answers.

    • AmidFuror@fedia.io
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      4 months ago

      Right. Currently the ways we avoid genetic disease are screening partners, screening IVF embryos, and in utero testing + abortion.

    • scarabic@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Because the US health care system already serves the wealthy and abandons the poor, any expensive treatments are seen as just further steps into a Gattaca future of even more dystopian disparity, especially when driven by a rich asshole personally.

      Universal negativity is also kind of the norm around here. A lot of folks on Lemmy believe we are slaves sucking Satan’s cock for breakfast, and anything that isn’t a complete burn down of our system and way of life is a negative.

    • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Is that his motivation though? Wanna make a bet that this does or doesn’t end as he says at face value?

    • jonathan7luke@lemmy.zip
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      4 months ago

      This isn’t really an answer to the ‘universal negativity’, but for a somewhat reasonable analysis of the pros and (surprisingly high number of) cons as well as some interesting grey areas, there’s an old LWT episode on this topic: https://youtu.be/AJm8PeWkiEU

    • Pommes_für_dein_Balg@feddit.org
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      4 months ago

      There’s nothing uncontroversial about human genetic modification.
      It’s a pandora’s box that just shouldn’t be opened.

      • rnercle@sh.itjust.works
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        4 months ago

        There’s nothing uncontroversial about human genetic modification.
        It’s a pandora’s box that just shouldn’t be opened.

        writes the person who isn’t suffering because of a genetic disorder or met anybody suffering from a genetic disorder