Caste system for humanity?

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Genetically engineered caste system?

Oh yes! Genetically engineer each person for their place.	5%	[ 1 ]
Genetically engineering people is a terrible idea.	37%	[ 7 ]
I don't know what to think	11%	[ 2 ]
I would want to genetically engineer all people to be about the same	11%	[ 2 ]
I would want to genetically engineer all people to be like AG	21%	[ 4 ]
Let me see the results.	16%	[ 3 ]

Total votes : 19

ruennsheng
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03 Mar 2009, 4:55 am

And life will be more monotonous than before:(

Legato
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03 Mar 2009, 7:34 am

Sand wrote:

I wonder what is so much more unattractive about cat people than human termites. Humanity became a dominant species by widening its spectrum of adaptability. Contracting that successful ability seems to me to be a dead end. Each human has many possibilities of development. Increasing those possibilities and adjusting the adaptability of society to accommodate those enlarged capabilities should be a positive change.

QFFT

Also, who would getd to decide whose genome gets modified in a certain way?

ruveyn
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03 Mar 2009, 9:52 am

Awesomelyglorious wrote:

An interesting consequence of eugenics is the notion of a genetically engineered caste system.

Some benefits of a eugenic caste system are the following:

*Division of talents such to create efficient division of labor
*Talent for specific tasks can be radically increased, to allow for better performance
*Individuals will work better together as personality can be tailored for a job
*Our social systems are not limited by human nature, but can be any theoretical variation

Some disadvantages can also be put forward:

*Lack of convertability between groups
*Lack of flexibility for changing situations
*Can be seen as leading to inhumanity

Are you for or against a genetically engineered caste system? If you were to create a caste system, what would the categories be, and on what basis would those be the categories.

I think genetic modification to eliminate certain genetic diseases would be a good thing. For example: Cystic Fibrosis, Color Blindness, Hemophilia, Huntington's Disease, Jakob Creuzfeld Disease, sickle cell anemia and such like maladies. These could be totally eliminated in a generation or two.

Such modifications would make for a healthier condition for the human race and not create social inequality per se.

I am not in favor of creating a slave caste of humans. If we need menial slaves to do some dirty work, we could upgrade chimpanzees for that role. Since the chimps have no rights we are bound to respect, modifying them would not violate any strong moral taboo.

ruveyn

Sand
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03 Mar 2009, 10:02 am

ruveyn wrote:

Awesomelyglorious wrote:

So-called "upgrading" of other species to create slave castes from other animals is, of course, in the tradition of any animal domestication from the breeding of cattle and dogs to the use of rats for biological research but when you approach humanity in these modifications there would probably be the necessity of inserting human genes into these primates to create useful domesticated slaves with some human characteristics. The morality at this point becomes a bit edgy since the insertion of humanity into animals brings in deep questions as to exactly how human they might be and how much human law might apply. Probably, when the capability becomes available to do this, robots with reasonable intellect will become available with less danger of becoming entangled with morality. But pushed far enough, I am sure legal treatment of very intelligent robots will get involved with morality.

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03 Mar 2009, 10:04 am

ruveyn wrote:

For example: Cystic Fibrosis, Color Blindness, Hemophilia, Huntington's Disease, Jakob Creuzfeld Disease, sickle cell anemia and such like maladies. These could be totally eliminated in a generation or two.

I think you meant Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease, which is not genetic–it's a prion disease.

Quote:

If we need menial slaves to do some dirty work, we could upgrade chimpanzees for that role. Since the chimps have no rights we are bound to respect, modifying them would not violate any strong moral taboo.

Spain has granted legal rights to chimps, and many people view it as wrong to do such things to our closest cousins.

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ruveyn
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03 Mar 2009, 1:01 pm

[quote="Orwell[/quote]
I think you meant Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease, which is not genetic–it's a prion disease.

[/quote]

I was thinking of Tay-Sachs. I miswrote.

Chimps have no inherent rights humans are bound to respect. The fact they have a law in Spain to the contrary does not change the situation. The Spaniard could endow flies and ants with rights also. It does not change any basic biology.

The chances are humans do not have any inherent rights either. Rights are basically a protocol and a convention. We tend to see beings like ourselves as having rights and other beings as not having rights. It is very subjective.

ruveyn

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03 Mar 2009, 3:47 pm

ruveyn wrote:

Chimps have no inherent rights humans are bound to respect. The fact they have a law in Spain to the contrary does not change the situation. The Spaniard could endow flies and ants with rights also. It does not change any basic biology.

OK. And you have no rights I am bound to respect. The fact that they have laws to the contrary does not change the situation.

Quote:

The chances are humans do not have any inherent rights either. Rights are basically a protocol and a convention. We tend to see beings like ourselves as having rights and other beings as not having rights. It is very subjective.

And if it is subjective convention, be aware that convention typically says "Don't screw around with animals that are cute or that are closely related to humans."

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Awesomelyglorious
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03 Mar 2009, 3:59 pm

ruveyn wrote:

I am not in favor of creating a slave caste of humans. If we need menial slaves to do some dirty work, we could upgrade chimpanzees for that role. Since the chimps have no rights we are bound to respect, modifying them would not violate any strong moral taboo.

ruveyn

Wouldn't upgrading chimpanzees just take more effort, and still lead to some of the same problems?(unless you are positing that genetic codes have rights) After all, for chimps to be suitable for working relatively autonomously in a human society, a lot more has to be done to humanize them, but with people, all that has to be done is to make them more servile. Why would the starting stock of genetics really matter in creating a caste?

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03 Mar 2009, 4:00 pm

Orwell wrote:

Yes, they are. You could probably engineer the "New Soviet Man" and finally make communism work.

Grrrrrr this would be the antithesis of communism

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Gromit
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03 Mar 2009, 4:00 pm

ruveyn wrote:

How are rights elements of basic biology?

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03 Mar 2009, 4:21 pm

DentArthurDent wrote:

Orwell wrote:

Yes, they are. You could probably engineer the "New Soviet Man" and finally make communism work.

Grrrrrr this would be the antithesis of communism

Hey, isn't that how the dialectic works? Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis?

I so love mocking Marxism. It might be a bit cheap to go after such an easy target, though.

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03 Mar 2009, 6:37 pm

Gromit wrote:

ruveyn wrote:

How are rights elements of basic biology?

When you get right down to it, they aren't.

ruveyn

DentArthurDent
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04 Mar 2009, 4:17 am

Orwell wrote:

I so love mocking Marxism. It might be a bit cheap to go after such an easy target, though.

Trust me religion is sooooooooo much easier to mock

ruveyn
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04 Mar 2009, 5:37 am

DentArthurDent wrote:

Orwell wrote:

I so love mocking Marxism. It might be a bit cheap to go after such an easy target, though.

Trust me religion is sooooooooo much easier to mock

Marxism IS a religion.

ruveyn

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04 Mar 2009, 6:22 am

ruveyn wrote:

Marxism IS a religion.

ruveyn

Hardly, religion has absolutely no scientific basis . You obviously know very little about Marxism, Socialism and Communism.

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04 Mar 2009, 9:44 am

DentArthurDent wrote:

ruveyn wrote:

Marxism IS a religion.

ruveyn

Hardly, religion has absolutely no scientific basis . You obviously know very little about Marxism, Socialism and Communism.

I know bullsh*t when I read it. Marxism is not scientific because it cannot be falsified empirically (the theoretical part). Read what Karl Popper has to say on the matter. The practical part: every Marxist experiment has failed. Every last one. That should tell you something.

Marxism, Socialism and Communism are pragmatic failures. Where ever they prevail, mediocrity reigns. Even in the so-called socialist counties of Europe, the free-market capitalist sectors of their mixed economies is what keeps them afloat. Even the Chinese Communists have given up on Communism. Now they are just plain thugs taken their gut of what the market produces.

ruveyn

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