Re: "Sound and Fury" over enhancements

From: J. Goard (wyattoil@foothill.net)
Date: Thu Jan 10 2002 - 01:08:03 MST


At 07:33 PM 1/9/02 -0800, hal@finney.org wrote:

>As should be clear, I was not making a claim, but advancing a thought
>experiment. Only the most ideologically arrogant would believe that
>enhancing the intelligence of their children would be guaranteed to make
>them follow the politics of their parents. My post was an invitation to
>consider how it would feel if this did not hold. Someone with a strong
>political ideology would then be put in something of the same position
>as the deaf parents today.

1) Why make the thought experiment more different than you need to?
Suppose, rather, that the modification resulted in your children speaking a
language which you lack the capacity for, and failing to develop full
fluency in your native language.

2) If it's universally wrong to place a concern for the closeness of your
relationship with your child over some independent concern for the child's
well-being, then shouldn't you be looking for the smartest, richest, most
capable parents you could turn your infant over to?

3) Look, trying to do what's best for everyone is just going to give us
more bloody ideological world wars. The deaf community is pretty small.
If you really think that kids who don't get cochlear implants are being
damaged, I'd suggest you learn to live with it. The majority of children
in the world, after all, are being hampered by adults in more significant
ways.



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