5 Matching Annotations
  1. Sep 2023
    1. synthetic bioengineering provides a really astronomically large option space for new bodies and new minds that don't have 00:04:28 standard evolutionary backstories
      • for: cultural evolution, cumulative cultural evolution, CCE, bioengineering, novel life form, culturally evolved life, bioethics, progress trap, progress trap - bioengineering, progress trap - genetic engineering
      • comment
        • cultural evolution, which itself emerges from biological evolution is acting upon itself to create new life forms that have no evolutionary backstory
        • this is tantamount to playing God
        • progress traps often emerge out of the large speed mismatch between cultural and biological/genetic evolution.
        • Nowhere is this more profound than in bioengineering of new forms of life with no evolutionary history
        • This presents profound ethical challenges
  2. Jan 2023
    1. In the near future, we will be in possession of genetic engineering technology which allows us to move genes precisely and massively from one species to another. Careless or commercially driven use of this technology could make the concept of species meaningless, mixing up populations and mating systems so that much of the individuality of species would be lost. Cultural evolution gave us the power to do this. To preserve our wildlife as nature evolved it, the machinery of biological evolution must be protected from the homogenizing effects of cultural evolution.

      !- Progress trap : genetic engineering - careless use of genetic engineering will interfere with biological evolution

    2. In the near future, we will be in possession of genetic engineering technology which allows us to move genes precisely and massively from one species to another. Careless or commercially driven use of this technology could make the concept of species meaningless, mixing up populations and mating systems so that much of the individuality of species would be lost. Cultural evolution gave us the power to do this. To preserve our wildlife as nature evolved it, the machinery of biological evolution must be protected from the homogenizing effects of cultural evolution.

      !- genetic engineering : risk - cultural evolution via genetic engineering could make the concept of species meaningless - it is a significant b potential progress traps

  3. Oct 2021
  4. Oct 2017
    1. ‘DeExtinction Movement’ (The Long Now Foundation, 2014b). This project supports the genetic engineering of endangered species (altering them physically to become more resilient in the Anthropocene) and the cloning and wholesale re-creation of extinct ones—passenger pigeons, wooly mammoths—work that founder Stewart Brand promotes as ‘genetic rescue’.

      The Long Now Foundation and its views open up a whole chasm of moral, ethical, and legal questions with this 'DeExtinction Movement'. How is genetically engineering endangered species a form of 'genetic rescue'? These species are dying out because of man and man's actions, which is a terrible reflection of the worst part of human nature, but it does not give us the right to clone nature and 'whitewash' all that we have done before. Just because we may have the capacity to do so, does not mean we should. We cannot simply decide that extinction is fine because we can create genetically engineered species in the future to 'make up' for our mistakes. How are we expected to learn from our mistakes if we can simply rewind and start again?