I love that movie, but what you say doesn't resonate with me. I see no reason to think that willpower and the rest are "unquantifiable." And ultimately the protagonist selfishly endangers his entire crew because he refuses to accept his physical limitations.
Confronting adversity and pushing our limits is great, but imposing unnecessary adversity on our children, when there is an alternative, is no good.
It's strange how this sort of sentiment appears whenever you talk about genetics, yet I never see anyone praise the virtues of imperfection when it comes to taking prenatal vitamins or not eating too much fish during pregnancy.
> It's strange how this sort of sentiment appears whenever you talk about genetics, yet I never see anyone praise the virtues of imperfection when it comes to taking prenatal vitamins or not eating too much fish during pregnancy.
This is a valid criticism, it's far easier to portray this issue as black/white, when in reality, it is unbelievably complex.
Nature of course, does not permit pure defects to exist for any substantial period of time. They are viciously eliminated from the gene pool. The ones that stick around are a double-edged sword. A lot of benefit here, some detriment there. And we separate them and decry the detriment ... but you can't have one without the other.
I am fearful of the day when we start eliminating these genes, that clearly have a detriment, but may also have a clear and more substantial benefit that is not readily apparent.
The computational power of natural selection over millions of years through trillions of permutations is unfathomable and does not rely on the necessity of human cognition. We are playing with fire when we start playing whack-a-mole with genes.
I'm all for trying, but we should tread carefully.
Recessive conditions can persist for a long time. Certainly there are some diseases which are double-edged swords (having one copy of the sickle cell gene is great if you live in an area where malaria is endemic and you don't have modern medical care) but it looks to me like there are a lot which are just plain bad.
Making all children tall and with perfect teeth is probably not a great idea. On the other hand, wiping out the mutation responsible for cystic fibrosis, say, would be a big win. Even wiping out the sickle cell mutation would probably be fine at this point, unless you're planning for your descendants to be slightly better off if they end up in the tropics after civilization collapses.
There's a lot of middle ground where things are unclear, but we shouldn't be too eager to extend that mystery to the edges and let that stop us from ending some unpleasant conditions.
> And ultimately the protagonist selfishly endangers his entire crew because he refuses to accept his physical limitations.
I think we watched different movies. Sure the scene on the treadmills showed that he could barely keep up, but he still kept up. To say that he "selfishly endanger[ed]" his crewmates is a bit hyperbolic.
He had a heart condition which was likely to kill him soon. He was healthy enough at the time, but there was a good chance he'd die from it while in space.
Confronting adversity and pushing our limits is great, but imposing unnecessary adversity on our children, when there is an alternative, is no good.
It's strange how this sort of sentiment appears whenever you talk about genetics, yet I never see anyone praise the virtues of imperfection when it comes to taking prenatal vitamins or not eating too much fish during pregnancy.