From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Tue Apr 24 2001 - 03:26:04 MDT
> At any
> rate, I'm glad to hear they don't take us seriously. Maybe it buys us a
> few more years before they decide we need to be protected from ourselves
> or some such.
Actually, I don't think it is a good thing at all. Remember that Sweden
banned cloning and genetic enhancement in the late 80's, long before
they were even considered feasible by most experts. Why? Because the
involved bioethicists viewed these science fiction ideas as bad (based
on their rather narrow ethical views) and banning something bad long
before it becomes even remotely possible is actually a kind of
foresight.
What we need to is to develop our ethical position in detail and get it
into the ethical discourse before things get too close to reality.
Otherwise we will not just see long-range bans like the above, but the
even nastier bans you get from a moral panic - remember Dolly!
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 08:07:11 MST