I'm still poking through the papers on this, and so have no really firm conclusions, but I do have a couple stray thoughts off the cuff.
First, they've got a lot of damned nerve speaking of this as "ethical;" Any ethics panel that would sign off on such a scheme should be taken out back and summarily shot. There is nothing, and I mean NOTHING, ethical about tinkering with people without their permission. Anyone recall the "Tuskegee Experiments"? Imagine those but on a world-wide scale. Wars would be started, because air doesn't just stay in one place, it circulates, and crosses national borders with impunity. The same could be said for their hare-brained scheme to cool the planet by releasing aerosols into the air - that air ain't just gonna stay there, and would soon be "cooling" folks that neither want nor need to be cooled.
"Scientists" may be the High priests of the New World religion, but they are not gods. Should they start tinkering with people on such a mass scale, they ought by rights to get tinkered back with, with extreme prejudice.
This sort of thing falls into the old "Nature vs. Nurture" dichotomy. I don't know of anything they could tinker with physically that would affect such intangibles as "altruism" and "empathy" Those are instilled, not installed. Oh, they might be able to inject the "warrior gene" into a mass of people and get them to kill one another off without even knowing why, but altruism and empathy are a bit harder to "engineer" without an instructor instilling them. The warrior gene just makes everyone angry, without directing a specific outlet. human nature takes over after it gets activated.
I have a gas mask, but I hate wearing the damned things, and would hate wearing one ALL THE TIME even more. That alone is something that would get some irritating folks killed permanently dead.
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First, they've got a lot of damned nerve speaking of this as "ethical;" Any ethics panel that would sign off on such a scheme should be taken out back and summarily shot. There is nothing, and I mean NOTHING, ethical about tinkering with people without their permission. Anyone recall the "Tuskegee Experiments"? Imagine those but on a world-wide scale. Wars would be started, because air doesn't just stay in one place, it circulates, and crosses national borders with impunity. The same could be said for their hare-brained scheme to cool the planet by releasing aerosols into the air - that air ain't just gonna stay there, and would soon be "cooling" folks that neither want nor need to be cooled.
"Scientists" may be the High priests of the New World religion, but they are not gods. Should they start tinkering with people on such a mass scale, they ought by rights to get tinkered back with, with extreme prejudice.
This sort of thing falls into the old "Nature vs. Nurture" dichotomy. I don't know of anything they could tinker with physically that would affect such intangibles as "altruism" and "empathy" Those are instilled, not installed. Oh, they might be able to inject the "warrior gene" into a mass of people and get them to kill one another off without even knowing why, but altruism and empathy are a bit harder to "engineer" without an instructor instilling them. The warrior gene just makes everyone angry, without directing a specific outlet. human nature takes over after it gets activated.
I have a gas mask, but I hate wearing the damned things, and would hate wearing one ALL THE TIME even more. That alone is something that would get some irritating folks killed permanently dead.
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