re: #22 wrenchwench

I don’t think genetic engineering is needed to make ‘social engineering’ work. There is a genetic component to behavior, but I think the non-genetic components are much larger.

Encourage you to listen to the podcast I posted.

The conversation turns to human nature, and how we have evolved to live in small groups.

It is the reason why online anonymous communities can turn so toxic. Unless there is strong enforcement (as here on LGF) by a known real person, social media turns toxic because we can just ignore the wishes/feelings of the other anonymous actor.

This all folds into our inability to have meaningful large scale decision making outside of strong authoritarianism.

So as a species we are locked into decision making for small groups, but today we live in massive groups.

It’s very discordant, our biology and our built civilization.

And that is why the path to “net zero” is paved by good intention but is ineffective.

We will stop burning coal when we run out of it. And the same for the rest of the fossil fuel civilization.

Eugenic concepts of social engineering could get us to a managed society, where a smaller population exists and people are engineered, biologically, for certain tasks. Limiting breeding it the most important one.

But that is a path that I and most people find about as horrible of a path that a path can be.