Apr 27 2011: This is definitely something that pops into my head as well, even with our exponentially accelerating technology the price meter only scales down when they've milked the last drop from the people willing to pay the most. Hopefully with bio-engineering comes the creation of people more inclined to make more intelligent decisions about this than the state of the world seems to allow today, but only the future will tell that. On the same token at least the rich and greedy will have to be the lab rats to this new-found technology, our short-term thinking and reasoning isn't going to be enough to foresee all the complications and margin for error when it comes to creating the building blocks for humans.
We have so much responsibility when it comes to tinkering with nature, and so little foresight. We've already seen some negative consequences from bio-engineered plants, the inevitable human ones will no doubt be tragic, but it won't stop me from encouraging the technology to push its limits. That being said I don't think modifying the human body/mind is going to sit well with a lot of conservative view-points and will have to be fought to death in the courts before it will be available (to the public, anyway).
I think a lot of these problems will be reasoned out by the people we create as long as we hold the ability to make their brain surpass the intellectual functionality of ours. A part of me fears being the generation to leap evolution into hyperdrive and watch it soar, another part of me revels in it.
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A reply on Conversation: Evolution 2.0, What to expect and who is incharge of next evolution ?
We have so much responsibility when it comes to tinkering with nature, and so little foresight. We've already seen some negative consequences from bio-engineered plants, the inevitable human ones will no doubt be tragic, but it won't stop me from encouraging the technology to push its limits. That being said I don't think modifying the human body/mind is going to sit well with a lot of conservative view-points and will have to be fought to death in the courts before it will be available (to the public, anyway).
I think a lot of these problems will be reasoned out by the people we create as long as we hold the ability to make their brain surpass the intellectual functionality of ours. A part of me fears being the generation to leap evolution into hyperdrive and watch it soar, another part of me revels in it.