CRISPR and other tools aren’t science fiction anymore. If the wealthy get there first, what happens to everyone else?
The plot of the film Gattaca explores this, the idea of what society looks like when there’s a class of genetically engineered, “superior” people, vs. the naturally born, “inferior” class.
Is that the movie where (sorry for the bad synopsis) the guy vacuums his work desk because he wants to go to space?
Tbh, I think GATTACA barely touched the topic. It focussed so much on the brothers’ rivalry that you could strip out the genetic engineering part and it’d barely change the movie
I really can’t imagine what China is doing…
Trump is directly undermining national safety by abandoning higher education, college visas for foreigners, scientific studies etc.
15 years ago we knew exactly what China was doing. Now? Good luck
He is in many many ways. Thats what i mean with China.
That movie is 9/10. The ending is absolutely beautiful.
Okay, but the moral of the story was that “superior” people weren’t actually superior. They were just racist.
The protagonist outwits and outperforms them all.
Seems like a pretty bad execution of the concept, then.
In some cases there were absolute superior though. Like the pianist with 12 fingers.
The actual moral of the story was that it’s not worth it. Being a bit better at some random shit like swimming, playing piano or piloting a rocket is not good enough to sacrifice the rest.
Like the pianist with 12 fingers.
Having twelve fingers isn’t what makes you good at playing the piano.
Being a bit better at some random shit like swimming, playing piano or piloting a rocket is not good enough to sacrifice the rest.
There’s an underlying question in the story that amounts to “if you’ve made Earth such a great place, why is everyone trying to leave?”
The plan to colonize Titan is, at its root, a eugenics fantasy.
Having twelve fingers isn’t what makes you good at playing the piano.
The movie literally says that the piece cannot be played without 12 fingers.
The plan to colonize Titan is, at its root, a eugenics fantasy.
the movie doesn’t say anything about “colonizing titan”, in fact the mission doesn’t even state what’s the purpose other than to get to titan which has never been done before - it symbolizes ultimate frontier that in the eyes of eugenicists would require a perfect human to be achieved and yet the guy that ends up outcompeting everyone is a not genetically modified and achieves this through sheer skill and determination.
There’s an underlying question in the story that amounts to “if you’ve made Earth such a great place, why is everyone trying to leave?”
You’re misinterpreting the ending. Vincent always felt rejected by the world for being a natural but ends up feeling bittersweet for leaving as he found Irene and Jerome who proved to him that earth is very much capable of loving him. Not “everyone is trying to leave earth”, just Vincent really.
I love Gattaca and really don’t understand your beef with it. It’s a beautiful story but awfully insightful too that aged perfectly even to this day! In fact, I’ll watch it again tonight :)
Not seen Gattaca, but a multi-tier, genetically structured society is the basis of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, which is well worth a read.
Same for H. G. Wells- The Time Machine book in the part where the traveler meets the Morlocks and the Eloi.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Time_Machine
EDIT: Got my authors mixed up, it wasn’t Jules Verne.
Great movie, excellent performances
The Beggars Trilogy by Nancy Kress touches on this as well, but is more focused on the issues with superintelligence rather than just gene alteration, although, because people are vain, the preference for things like hair, skin and symmetry also exist in the story’s world. Oh yeah, and the coolest concept from this trilogy is a thing called “sleeplessness”, where people can alter there genes to remove the biological need to sleep, allowing people to be able to be productive for as many hours as they desire.
As others have said, go see Gattaca. It’s completely about this topic and very interesting.
Awesome movie.
spoiler
An incredibly powerful scene. I still think about it regularly when thinking about human limitations.
As someone suffering from a terrible genetic disease that will kill me soon, any amount of preventing these diseases under any circumstances gets a thumbs up from me.
Sadly, the most probable cloning related future would be Gattaca
^(edit typo)
They don’t need genetic engineering to have advantage over everyone else tbf.
Yah they already have inherited wealth and privilege, will it make ANY difference for the rest of us if their kids don’t get the diseases that they can afford to treat anyway?
Lets say they do make ubermensch super-babies and create peak physical perfection… it will take generations before that creates enough of a class-divide that it will be noticable and by then, enough of them will have fucked around and bred with the common-folk that the edges of that divide are also going to get fuzzier and fuzzier. The world is full of rich people who mingle everywhere and are allowed to impregnate who they want and nobody cares.
The only way you get the science-fiction dystopia with beautiful rich monsters with super powers versus the plucky gang of resistance fighters who are rough around the edges but have hearts of gold, is if you separate the wealthy elite out and make them live on Mars or something.
Here’s a scarier thought, if they can fine tune this shit enough they’ll probably just clone themselves and pull a ship of Theseus on themselves. Removing the only remaining equalizer between them and the rest of humanity.
The rich fucks at the top want to become gods. They won’t call it that but that’s the end game for the ones with the most hand on the wheel.
I’ll be dead, humanity is fucked as i see it but things could change i guess.
Can’t wait for them to make their kids super smart and then their kids call them idiots.
Because they will be smarter haha
Despite being nearly 100 years old, Brave New World (1931), written by Aldous Huxley, covers the idea of class-based genetic engineering and genetics based class definition, as one of its core themes.
Don’t worry, they’re absolutely stupid enough to practice CRISPR to the point where their kids are inbreeding within a generation because their CRISPR fixed genetics made them all too biologically similar to create effectively genetically diverse offspring.
Techno fuedalism is still fuedalism. So that means idiots all at the top.
Wonder what the new Hapsburg chin will be.
This already happens with social factors that affect physical development like access to nutrition and a permanent place to live.
This happens in a smaller way with access to prenatal testing and abortions. Parents with access to those things are at least able to detect and avoid the more debilitating birth defect, while parents without access are more likely to have a child with a severe birth defect. If they’re already struggling materially, that can sometimes guarantee that both the parents and child will have no upward mobility.
We’re still overdue for a eugenics war and WW3 before Star Trek timeline.
Technology is (at least for now) not exclusive to the rich. There can be billionaires’ secret labs and underground diy labs. Since few science fictions pop up in the topic and CRISPER is mentioned, I am going to leave CRISPER cookbook and Chapter 2 which was written in response to Roe vs Wade.
We’re getting the movie Gattaca IRL before Half-Life 3 and GTA 6 smdh
Libertarians not even building Rapture yet and they’re going full Gattaca? How gauche.
everytime i see “smdh” i think “shake my dick hard” for some reason.
Can’t unsee now, thanks
Don’t worry. The poor will just become extinct like the other hominids that are no longer with us.
It shouldn’t be anything too bad.
Nothing of value was lost /s
But seriously, what a fucking bleak endgame
Nothing lasts forever. Homo sapiens was bound to be replaced by another hominid at some point.
“homo techno” according to grymes, lmao.
Planet of the Rich, where the apes are billionaires and everyone else is… pretty much the same.
