From: Ross A. Finlayson (raf@tiki-lounge.com)
Date: Thu Dec 28 2000 - 15:16:58 MST
Damien Broderick wrote:
> >I though it was a good movie, I like most movies with Uma Thurman.
>
> I disagreed profoundly with the scientific and political subtext--except in
> so far as it was an allegory of the evils of racist discrimination (and
> then it misfired because by hypothesis the gene-engineered *were*
> physically and intellectual superior)--but then, of course, I don't much
> like most movies with Uma Thurman.
>
She was in other movies and some were good and some were not so good. I just
think she's a good actress or actor if that is the term.
>
> >It wasn't
> >necessarily plausible. For example, the swimming competitions and where the
> >invalid brother saves his valid brother from drowning are symbolic.
>
> Symbolic of *what*? At the end, this goose does the equivalent of Homer
> Simpson plagiarizing his way into a job running a nuclear reactor. The
> clear implication to me is that the space mission will be dangerously
> compromised by his actions, just as badly as if someone with a major heart
> condition joined a polar expedition, but hey, why should *he* be left out
> of the fun?
>
It seemed in the context of the movie that he (Vincent?) was otherwise qualified
for the task.
>
> The explanation offered in the swimming scene was that the unmodified bro
> was able to match and even beat the phenotypically enhanced bro *because he
> held nothing in reserve*. That is, he could swim farther out to sea in one
> direction because his brother rather wimpishly planned to get back alive.
> This stupid plan turned out to work because his superior brother
> *unaccountably in terms of the agreed conditions* ran out of puff on the
> extended outward journey (even though he still had nearly enough reserves
> to get back to shore), and godhelpus was then towed in, coughing and
> gasping and drowning, by the feeble brother, who presumably Used the Force.
> Give me a break. A symbol has to be commensurate with the claim it's
> allegorizing. GATTACA just denied without a blush the very claims it
> established.
>
We can't say exactly why he won. Maybe he won because the brother did not
believe he could, disbelief was expressed, as it defied his logic.
>
> Now this is a worthy tactic if all such claims really are bogus. Fritz
> Leiber published a very famous short story in the 1950s, `Poor Superman',
> which took the piss nicely out of L. Ron Hubbard's absurd claims; Leiber's
> sarcastic equivalent of a `clear' is palpably self-deceiving, like the
> dupes who feed the Scientology coffers. But real gene engineering of the
> GATTACA kind *won't* be bogus, even if Uma Thurman and Jeremy Rifkin tell
> us otherwise. Its drastic improvements *won't* be amenable to being bested
> by grit on the past of the old fashioned unmodified, any more than a guy
> with a megaphone and all the determination in the world can better be heard
> at cross-continental distances than one with a radio transmitter.
>
> Damien Broderick
Genetic engineering might be able to maximize our potential as human beings.
Consider an ant, it can lift thirty times its weight, no human can do that, and
probably no genetically modified human could.
So, the genes that provide a body for a sport phenotype might allow a person with
the most scientifically tuned and efficient body for windsurfing, for example.
Will the person make a good windsurfer? Take twenty random people and train them
for five years to be windsurfers. Will any be?
There is certainly nature versus nurture in effect here, in the context of
genetic modification as a panacea to humanities' woes. Create twenty clones of
Shakespeare, would that prove conclusively that Shakespeare wrote all of his
works? It helps if they're taught to read.
So, if you claim that genetic engineering of people will make people hardier and
better in all ways than all the previous thousands of generations, then I would
disagree. It might make them very good, but then they would just be the previous
generation.
Ross
-- Ross Andrew Finlayson Finlayson Consulting Ross at Tiki-Lounge: http://www.tiki-lounge.com/~raf/
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