Harris' final chapters

I think a great deal of Harris' book hinges on the idea that one should give little merit or consideration to processes because they are "natural". Which, as I've stated, is not necessarily the whole story. (Human) Morality is specific to humans, and not does not apply to the entire planet or the rules of nature, so you can't say a natural process is either moral or immoral (First parenthesis added because great apes have similar, but different cultural morality). One doesn't say that a wolf murdered another wolf, because "Murder" is an emotionally weighted term and the wolf doesn't know (our) right from wrong. As I once wrote in a paper "[Nature] is a neutral statistician." The fact that this conversation is even taking place is evident of this; The rules of morality are negotiable and do not represent the "Laws of Nature". Those who don't are not arguing by emotional virtue to preserve nature may simply be calling for great caution when disrupting such a complicated and inter-woven system.

He is likely tying the tendency to err with nature, in his mind, to religious appreciation of "God's masterpiece" or at least to that secular feeling of the Numinous. I will say that I am definitely affected by this feeling when climbing a mountain or overlooking a lovely forest, but at the same time I know that humans cannot live by nature's rules alone. Hell, I am a web developer; I couldn't even feed myself without technology. So it is definitely possible to appreciate both the natural and the technological and weigh their merits equally. In fact, as indicated with the rise of green energy, it's probably essential. Why reinvent a bumpy wheel instead of sand it down?

I largely dismissed Kass's arguments because they were easily shot down. Even Harris was able to do it pretty handily. Habermas, on the other hand, had some good, complex points, however culturally influenced (I'm not sure that a person's will is as powerful as the Germans seem to believe. See WWI). It reveals a nuanced aspect of individual suffering vs public benefit. Habermas points out that the potential for the actions of unwise parents to inflict completely, thoroughly irreversible harm is risen ten-fold if you empower them to alter the genetics of their children (Germans are also wary of any claim that certain genes are better than others and should be selected for, for pretty obvious reasons). While it is true that any number of parental decisions can put their children in this position, genetic manipulation IS completely irreversibly, while one could conceivably work one's way out of health or economic problems. So, a child could potentially be existentially or physically harmed to an atrocious extend. BUT most parents will probably (debate-ably) make decent, if not good, decisions concerning the genetic future of their children. These interventions won't come cheap, and parents will probably only resort to them if they are avoiding a terrible disease or providing some great benefit. So, most altered children may benefit greatly from their parents' ability to alter them while a minority may suffer in equal scores. The underlying question here: Is suffering a greater priority than benefit? If the answer is yes, Is there a point where the suffering minority becomes inconsequential? Let's say only 10 children were to suffer as opposed to 20,000 children being altered to avoid their parents' chemical depression? Would this be worth it? 

As a final point, I think genetic alteration may be necessary to continue evolution and is probably the price we pay for every individual getting to mate, whether or not their genes are fit. (It's debatable that my genes would be fit in the strictest sense and I still eagerly await the day my first child is born.) But a true extension of evolution would be alterations only for the sake of adaptions. For example, if the sun begins to cool in the distant future, maybe we ought to be altered to be able to withstand cold or be more suited for space travel.

Enhacing Evolution: Chapters 3 and 4

I'll start with a criticism about Harris' argumentative styling. He often makes jumps from one concept to another with his weak explanations glossed over with his boisterous and aggressive language choices. These are important hinges for his overall narrative and he doesn't seem to be aware of the possibility that not everyone made the jump with him. For example, this whole book seems to assume that the lack of immorality is the same thing as morality (and that there are no degrees of morality and immorality). Anyone who's ever had to make a tough moral decision will beg to differ. Another example is his jump from "The imperative to do good " to "The imperative to make things better." Many would interpret that instead as "The imperative to help those less fortunate" or maybe "The imperative to minimize bad". The concept is vast and largely up for personal interpretation, which is effected by any number of personal traits. It doesn't make sense for to assume that we all think of it the same way that he does.

In terms of these particular chapters, I feel that Harris makes another jump when he seems to claim all therapy as enhancement. One example is vaccines. He provides a quote from an opponent about vaccines being an acceptable alternation because it's stimulating a natural function of the immune system and then proceeds to attack it's nuance with a ham-fisted argument. He says that, similarly, a medical processes that made the brain grow 10% additional cells would be natural because the brain creates cells on it's own. That takes about 2 seconds of thought to dismantle. An immune system would produce antibodies after defeating an illness, whether or not humans intervened. A mostly-dead virus is just easier to for a immune system to handle. No process within the body makes the brain 10% bigger. Either he is unable to understand nuance or he just doesn't care. He uses this line of thinking and then moves on to all therapy being enhancement while I, for one, was thoroughly unconvinced and therefore did not believe his successive arguments held water since they were based on this one.

On his subject of Normalcy: I believe he thinks his opponents all worship normalcy and, by extension, nature like pagans. This is not the entirety of the desire to err toward normalcy. The Eco-system and our bodies are incomprehensibly complicated. It took millions of years for it to become this way, and we can never predict what will happen if we mess with it, or if we will be able to fix it/ it will be able to right it's self. Frankly, we are lucky it's worked out so vastly in our favor. As many-a grandfather will say: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

In chapter 4, he attempts to address the population problem that would arise if people stopped dying but... I didn't really see an argument in that section of the chapter. All he says is that people will still die of disease and accidents, but if we had the technology to enable immortality by his own logic we would have the technology to almost completely prevent and treat disease. And those wealthy enough to afford the technology aren't likely to meet the kind of accidents that kill. Then he goes on to say people may live until they are 5,000. So? What was the argument? People will still have more children. Did he just ignore this important point? 

Enhancing Evolution Intro through chapter 2

I want to start off by saying that I really disapprove of Harris' tone. When one is discussing a subject as complicated and uncertain as he is, it's pretty disrespectful to refer to your opponent's arguments as "tirades" or "huffing and puffing". This may be an attempt at a casual, humorous writing style, but when it ventures into claims like "...those misguided enough to find virtue in nature and normalcy." you are standing to alienate those who don't agree with you. In fact, it started to read like it was meant to entertain those who already agreed with him. Very irritating.

I also find various shortcomings in his arguments. He tends to reiterate the same point over and over again with different examples. For example, there were multiple times he addressed the "Even if everyone can't have this, it's no reason to suspend it" argument when it was totally unessesary and actually weakened this point-- His first example was by far the best saying "reading used to be only available to an elite few, but it was still good for humanity."

Other points he makes that raise serious flags: He claims that if there were some substance we could release into the environment to kill diseases that harm humans, that is safe for the ecosystem, we should enthusiastically to it and are morally bound to do so. Recent history does have a substance like that. DDT was used to kill typhus-carrying lice and other harmful parasites. It was thought to be so safe that classrooms full of smiling children were filmed being doused with DDT in spray form as PSAs. Later, it was found to not only poison wildlife, but also cause developmental toxicity, diabetes, breast cancer and carcinogenicity. It is now banned. So no, we are not morally bound to pursue these things with such a relentless fervor.

On page 26, he goes into chemical enhancements, seemingly claiming that martial use of performance-enhancing drugs is okay. Meth was also invented as a military, performance-enhancing drug. Soldiers became addicted and wracked with all the problems associated. It wasn't their choice to even take it to begin with. Perhaps the terrible side-effects of these drugs will surface years later, after we've thrown the veterans into the gutters and scorn them for their drug problem. Furthermore, he claims that if everyone in sports was allowed to use steroids, then the advantage would be available to everyone. If steroids were allowed, non-drugged athletes wouldn't be able to compete with the doped athletes. They would have to take steroids to stay in the game, so you are taking their choice in the matter. Steroids also have nasty side-effects that you are now pushing onto all athletes. It becomes less about the triumph and dedication of the individual and more about who can pump the most dope into their bodies without showing their side-effects.

He also spends a lot of time defending the personal intent of a theoretical enhanced person, saying that their enhancement was not pursued for the direct result of having an advantage over non-enhanced people. That doesn't mean they don't have an advantage. By definition, they do. Just as we have an advantage over a person born in a war-torn, poverty-stricken country. Is that fair? No.

Furthermore, if I was arguing his case, I'd bring up that the two aspects of Darwinian evolution within our perception, sexual selection and death by poor adaption, no longer affect us much in the first world: A lonely, poorly adapted person can go on the internet and find someone, somewhere to couple with and most diseases won't kill you before you have time to reproduce. We pay for improvements to individual experience- and biotechnical enhancements may be the way to mitigate that cost.

On Amy Gutmann's "The Ethics of Synthetic Biology, Guiding principles for emerging technologies"

It is good that Amy Gutmann's counsel sought to  layout some principles to guide deliberations about the complex issue of biotechnology, but I feel as though the guidelines they laid out were too vague, and a bit too geared toward pacification to be truly pragmatic, especially if they only remain guidelines. 

For example, the proposed principle Public Beneficence (that is minimizing the risk to the public and maximizing the benefit) sounds really comforting at first, but one just has to look at the Superfund sites in poor neighborhoods to realize the risk will not be bared proportionately should some environmental disaster occur.

Responsible Stewardship may work great for stary-eyed, public-minded researchers but the moment biotechnology become highly profitable this concept will be dust in the wind. BP let oil guzzle into the ocean for weeks and not only moved slowly and reacted callously, but were barely punished.

Fairness and Justice also seemed like a pipe dream. How can one expect fairness and justice from a culture who's CEOs earn over 400 times more than an average employee in the same company? When half of the voting block is still convinced Trickle Down economics are a good idea, then we'll never realize a future in which "the unavoidable burdens of technological advances do not fall disproportionately on any particular individual or group."

Additionally, There's no guarantee that firms will follow these guidelines unless they are enforced by law, and even then it may be hard to monitor until it's too late. In many cases, we only find out about shady business dealing after they've caused some sort of disaster. (See: General Electric or the aforementioned BP) One thing that comes to mind: I recently saw a schematic of a proposed bio-fuel farm in which synthetic bacteria designed to excrete ethanol would live in acres of racks, soaking up sun. But what happens if there's a leak? Do we get a self-replicating oil spill? What if a greedy company head decides to use a public water source irresponsibly and the bacteria are ingested? Projects of this magnitude should be closely monitored and strictly punishable, in my opinion.