Designer Babies will be a Reality Soon

With the coming Biotech Age of humanity of which we are standing on the cusp of, the philosophical question of genetic modification of humans is suddenly a real question.  I am going to throw my two cents into the debate.  Patrick Cox has a fascinating article that raises scientific philosophical concerns.

I like the idea of genetic modification in humans, at least conceptually.

What, you say!?  Aren't you a devout Christian? 

Well, yes, I am, and there is nothing in the Bible about genetic modification, as much as I cannot find anything related to transgenderism either.  So, my judgments will be based on a scientifically informed Judeo-Christian viewpoint.

My first observation is that generational genetic changes are random.  Randomness is both good and bad, obviously.  Randomness is the source of creativity, among other intrinsically human things.  Designer babies mean limiting randomness to what we define as 'positive.'  Therein lies the rub.  What is actually positive both now and going into the future?  I am against genetically modified organism (GMO) food, because I believe it is having barely attributable, but distinct differences in our collective health, not all of which are positive.  I do not doubt humans view of what are 'positive' biological traits now, I doubt whether we will have the foresight as a species to avoid very decidedly bad aftereffects in the future.  Humans as a race are notoriously bad at predicting the future.  I am often no better --although I am often vindicated as time moves forward, sometimes to my great dismay-- but when you are dealing with revolutionary, civilization age-defining technologies a little self-doubt is a very healthy thing.

So, where is the balance?

Human genetics is random.

I think that pursuing genetic modifications to eliminate the decidedly negative things in genetics that we can see and know with fairly good certainty ahead of time is good.  Curing genetic diseases that cause death, good.  Preventing conditions that retard, incapacitate or otherwise, probably good.  Pursue an individual risk vs reward analysis.

Will this genetic disease kill this baby if left unaltered?  Yes?  Then fix it.
Will this genetic disease leave a baby retard or paralyzed?  If yes, then fix it.

Because even if we screw up their genetics in some initially imperceptible but hugely significant way, they were going to die or be physically or mentally retarded anyway, so the alternative was probably worse.

That is akin to trying to improve the average randomness like this.

You start small.  Watch these kids grow up, become productive adults.  Make sure we did not make some catastrophic error in genetics.  Wait 10-15 years and then try something more extreme.

Will this genetic modification make this person more resistant to common diseases? Yes?  Then do it.

 So, wait 10 to 15 years and see if these more extreme modifications don't result in any long term catastrophic consequences for these individuals.

By the time we have been doing genetic engineering of humans for fifteen years, hopefully fringe cases will pop up and the science will be fixed and tweaked to alleviate these cases before we engage in trying to actually positively modify our genetics.

So my thought is this.  Let's avoid the genetic enhancements and focus exclusively on curing diseases.  From that foundation we can begin enhancements that focus exclusively on reducing disease chances in the future.

If you start on enhancements and designer babies, you risk doing something very adverse inadvertently.  We want to take this genetic modifications thing slow to avoid the Asgard problem.

Jumping straight to designer babies is as likely to result in,

than in anything immensely positive to the human race as a whole.  Just ask the U.S. Federal Reserve about trying to control market prices...

So, caution is always good.  The only way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time.

Trump

This is going to be a two-part post because I have been neglecting my blog lately, despite my head brimming with topics to write about.  The two topics are completely disparate and have little to do with one another, aside from AI affecting the technology fabric underlying a Trump presidency.  So, sorry, keep your mental compartmentalization ready.

First, Trump.  I don't like Trump.  He is a big government guy and I am a libertarian.  He wants to do all kinds of expensive things with other people's money, which makes him only marginally better than Bernie Sanders and only morally superior to Hillary Clinton.  Currently, we have over 19 trillion USD in sovereign debt, not even considering unfunded liabilities like government pensions, social security, and Obamacare... I have read estimates in excess of 100 trillion USD in unfunded liabilities going forward.

100 trillion.  100,000,000,000,000,000!

Let that sink in for a bit...

Except that this number is so astronomical that most people cannot even conceive of it, let alone begin to fathom the consequences of this number.  But the debt will be paid.  It has to be, because the consequences of not paying it are world-ending (at least in the short term).  And it will be paid, even if other countries take it out of us in blood, which I imagine that they will be more than happy to do if we default on tens of trillions of USD in sovereign debt.

But we can't default, you say!

Technically, yes... you are correct, but a hyper-inflationary money printing extravaganza qualifies as a 'default,' just ask Zimbabwe, Argentina, and now Venezuela.

These countries are examples of unbounded spending on anything... defense, social entitlements, whatever...  eventually you run out of other people's money.   And if you don't think that this will happen here in the U.S., think again.  It doesn't matter how powerful you think you are, the piper must always be paid.  And Trump has all kinds of expensive plans including building walls, tax cuts, tariffs, and boosting defense spending, which I am in favor of, so long as we stop this military adventurism nonsense.  But you cannot do all of that at once without funding it, and there are only two sources of funding, debt and currency.  You can issue debt until you can't when the rest of the world figures out that the emperor has no clothes, then you must print... or cut spending.

Debt is one reason I do not like Trump.

A second reason that I neither trust nor like Donald Trump is that all of his solutions revolve around tariffs.  A tariff is a sanction or penalty on incoming goods from other countries.

That $2000 TV you envy in the electronics store?  $4000 after Trump sanctions the country that manufactures it.

Those $20 clothes at Walmart?  $30-40 after Trump sanctions countries that manufacture them.

Those $50 car parts that you buy from Mexico to keep your jalopy running?  $100+ after Trump sanctions Mexico to force them to pay for the wall.  To say that Mexico is going to pay for the wall is technically true, but in reality you are going to pay for it.

And this is just the beginning. 

Tariffs start trade wars.  That is simply how it works.  So, China will put tariffs on our iPhones and start chasing US companies out of China and ramp up their cyber- and economic espionage campaign to steal IP from us in order to continue making our shit for less than we can.  So, we lose anyway.

 This post is already running way longer than intended, so I guess I will close with the Hillary/Bernie alternative which is equally dim.  You'll have to wait for comments on AI-theism.

A Hillary/Bernie presidency would consist of free shit for everyone.  Great, you say!  I love free shit!

Except that nothing is free.

If we have close to 100 trillion in already unfunded liabilities, why not throw on another 20 trillion.  No big deal, right?  So, sure, we can enjoy our social entitlements until our civilization collapses under the crushing debt load.

So, the Bernie/Hillary presidency, which also has this penchant for big government and spending other people's money, will run out of money long before a Trump presidency will...  and I think there is at least some small modicum of hope that Trump will see the error of his ways before he actually screws us all over.  Hillary and Bernie will be screwing us as a matter of principle, so I don't see any hope down that path.

So, long story short, I am not voting.  I am preparing to run for the hills, so that when the inevitable shit hits the fan I will be protected.  And you would be wise to do the same.

Draw a Secret

Here are some test images from my draw a secret program.

I am, as always, following my simple and stupid methodology.

This post has almost no text and a lot of images, expand at your risk.

The Exploits of the Demopublican Party

Doug Casey is a pessimist, but a pessimist on solid grounds.  The problems that the U.S. faces are real, serious, debilitating, and potentially catastrophic.

The U.S. debt is not going to simply disappear, unless we print our way out of it --which with all of the discussion about helicopter money going around would not surprise me-- and there are severe consequences if this debt is not dealt with.

But the true rot of our country is not purely economic.  The economics are merely following the social and cultural rot that is decaying our country from the inside out.  This rot has its source at the philosophy of humanism, and we are seeing the results of humanism applied and lived out on a mass scale.  And it will only get worse as the idiocracy takes hold.  Our learning institutions are pushing out droves of mindless slaves, who probably couldn't reason their way out of the brown paper bag, while the entitlement culture is eroding what little prosperity was left in the system.  Eventually, the only buyer left in the U.S. Treasury market will be the U.S. Federal Reserve who relies on printing money to fund their purchases.  Japan is already there; the U.S. is only a few steps behind.  The coming economic collapse is very sure, the only uncertainty is the timing.

So, what is the solution?

I am not sure that there is a solution that will actually prevent this, barring major cultural shifts, which I do not see happening.  So, I reluctantly admit that Doug Casey may very well be correct when he says, "the only thing that you can do is protect yourself."

So, to protect yourself against currency collapse (the result of excessive money printing), buy gold, silver, real estate, guns, even Bitcoins might work.   Anything that is not reliant on the U.S. government for it's underlying value.

I really think that Christians should begin banding together and preparing a set of local church arbitration courts to replace the judicial system that will collapse when the government collapses.  At least then some sense of justice will be maintained on a local level, and we can simply arbitrate amongst other Christians for now, and pagans can use it when it becomes necessary.

For European Christians, they need to prepare to care for and protect Muslims when the next holocaust comes; because everything is in place now for the holocaust of Muslims in Europe, all that is required is the spark that lights the keg.

As with all predictions though, the exact timing is very difficult to determine, but this is why we are to remain watchful and keenly aware of the world around us.

You can read Doug Casey's thoughts on the political election in the U.S. here.  Be warned though, there is an auto-play video that will load on the page.  You can read it below if you want to avoid the auto-play video.  And if you feel so inclined, he offers his solutions for purchase, which are very pragmatic solutions.