Posted by alexandra_k on September 21, 2013, at 23:33:24
In reply to Re: the commons, posted by alexandra_k on September 21, 2013, at 18:11:33
If you are driving a car you can detect hazards pretty quickly and send a signal for the car to speed up or veer in order to protect yourself. If you are remote controlling an exploratory vehicle on Mars things are harder because of the time delay. If you wanted the vehicle to come to no harm the best thing to do would be to try and program in some sorts of intelligence. The ability to detect the edge of a surface and stop before falling off it, for instance.
Imagine that you have some terminal disease but scientists can offer you the option of being stored safely away while they work on a cure at which point they will revive you and cure you. You need to figure out what kind of vehicle to put yourself in while your body awaits a cure. What will your strategy be? Will you get a vehicle that burrows you down below the earth and hides? Will you get a vehicle that moves about in the effort to avoid predators?
I am not doing Dennett's example justice...
But the idea is that we are such vehicles for our genes. They get together and co-operate in order to produce a vehicle to house themseleves in: Us. They give us brains so we can respond to the changing world / environment in order to protect them... But...
Perhaps... We can use some of the tools they gave us to look after them... We can subvert those... We can use those... To look after ourself. Perhaps even at their expense.
I mean...
From my perspective...
A teacher can contribute / leave much more than many genetic parents do. Leave more what? Whatever it is that WE (as people) care about. The influence of Newton and Einstein etc etc etc. I don't even know if they had kids or not. In a sense... Who cares?
Genes just aren't particularly important to us. Not for the things that matter to us. Things like... Creativity. Intelligence. Kindness. Pro-Sociality... The effects of genes is really very negligable compared to the effects of environment / teaching. By this I mean to say: Most viable human beings have the potential to be much more creative, intelligent, kind, and pro-social (for example) than they currently are with their current genetic endowment - if only they had better environmental and educational conditions.
It... Doesn't matter who the breeders are (from our point of view) so long as some of us do... The things we care most about... Are more horizontally transmitted (from one generation to the other) rather than vertically (from parents to offspring). Public education etc acts as a buffer from having particularly sucky parents...
Adoption...
This is perhaps one of the things that was wrong with eugenics. We... Don't have to worry about individuals with no social conscience breeding more than individuals with social conscience thus leading to the demise of our species... We... Have to worry about the lack of education / sucky environmental conditions / awful parenting that leads to individuals with no social conscience. The latter will fix things up for most everyone... The former... Well... You can send your criminals to Australia but new ones will only emerge as fast as you can ship 'em and Australians (now) aren't as criminal as they once were. Perhaps.
;-)
poster:alexandra_k
thread:1047868
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20130914/msgs/1051105.html