Maybe I'm weird, but does anyone else have worries about what future their prospective children would inherit? In particular things that worry me: 1. the growing geopolitcal turmoil which is likely to eventually descend into a great war of sorts, the footage coming out of Ukraine is horrifying, 2. climate change isn't going to be dealt with and again, lots of violence will ensure because of that, almost certainly, 3. not sure what to think about AGI, but I'm not entirely dismissive and at best it seems like a dual use technology, 4. a GATTACA-type future where the super rich figure out a way to birth super humans with perfect genetics and top 0.001% IQs. All of those make the future look so unappealing.
graemep|2 months ago
What sort of world did a child born in Europe in 1900 or 1930 inherit? What about a black child born in the US in 1950, or South Africa in 1960? What about a child born in China in 1950 or (what is now) Bangladesh in 1960 or Sri Lanka in 1970? Their children and grand children will have a much better life.
dachworker|2 months ago
Like, I certainly cannot afford a family of 12 children. Nor can I afford to buy the amount of land that they acquired, and certainly not by working the same kind of jobs they did.
general1465|2 months ago
If everything goes alright for them. The thing is that we don't know about knock-on effects and monkey paw results - we can switch this gene on, your child has IQ 190, but later parents will figure out that it has social intelligence of a rock. Or we can switch this gene on, your child is now able to compete with marathon runners, whoops heart attack at 32 years.