HatesHighElves wrote:I just finished The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan about the relationship of humans to plants. His discussion of Monsanto's genetic engineering of potatoes terrifies me. Moral statements aside, I don't think we'll be wise enough to proceed with the technology without the necessary first step of identifying and reconciling all the consequences of the technology. We just aren't as clever as we think we are and we're greedier than we think we are by factors of ten. Also, the thugs, villians, etc. will get their hands on it and use if for their own nefarious purposes. Think I'm wrong? TNT and nuclear fission, the machine gun, etc. were all thought to make war obsolete or not worth the cost. It didn't work.
I'm not sure if you caught the gist of my point. First off, Im not suggesting the genetic re-engineering of the human population. Second, as I said, human nature itself would likely prevent the implementation of genetic re-engineering of the human populace. However, genetic engineering is the only technology that exists that can change the underlying problem that is at the root of human conflict: human nature. I say this not based on empty speclation, but based on demonstrable examples of this being accomplished with other species.
Nuclear bombs, TNT, machine guns, and every other invention under the sun never altered human nature, and consequently, it was stupid to imagine they would change much of anything (although, to be fair, probably the only thing that prevented world war 3 was nuclear weapons, even if we came damn close a couple times). In short, while other people made such predictions, their predictions were based on one axiom that has been offered up many a times, but remains just as stupid as ever. Namely, that by creating a new, even more devestating weapon, somehow people would decide to stop killing each other.
Genetic engineering isn't really analogous to a machine gun or a nuclear bomb. The only thing it is really analogous to is the use of psychiatry (i.e. trying to alter our psychology through the use of chemicals), and perhaps artificial selection. In each case, we are talking about fundamentally altering that which makes us human, namely, our genes or, in the case of biochemistry, our chemistry. In each case we are talking about using applied sciences to alter human behavior in a fashion that is demonstrable, and which we have managed in other species. We have simply chosen not to apply it to humans, beyond the use of pharmaceuticals on a case by case basis. Now, Im not saying that is bad. I doubt we could trust any government agency to do a good job of genetically reengineering the human population or of dumping pharmaceuticals into our water, nor would I ever trust any agency with such a thing. But, if you re-read what I posted, you would see that that wasn't really my point.
My point was simply that, for the first time in history, we have a concrete technology, genetic engineering, that is, factually, capable of altering the behavior and nature of species irrevocably. Humans, being just another species, are just as subject to the phenomena that have allowed us to reengineer other species. Granted we would need to study how this works in humans specifically before we could do it, but that is something that is known to be doable at this point. I never claimed such a thing will happen to humanity as a whole. As I said, I doub it ever will. My point was simply that, amazingly, it could, which is an entirely different proposition.
So no, I don't think you are wrong, in so far as corruption and ill-intent and malfeasance would all be barriers to this ever happening. I do think maybe you misunderstood me though, since I never meant to suggest it would. Just that we have the technology such that we could, which is, to me, remarkable in and of itself.
About entropy. I don't think it takes so long. The entropy of American democracy, for example, took place in only a few generations. In fewer than 250 years government "of, by and for the people" degenerated into fascism, cronyism and military/industrialism. Not a very cheering legacy, if you ask me.
That's not entropy as a scientific principle (i.e. there is nothing inherently entropic about political systems that has been scientifically or mathematically proven as of yet). American democracy hasn't followed any principles regarding the interaction of two equilibrium states. That things change is not the same as entropy. To quote from a random description of entropy I just dragged up:
"But it should be remembered that entropy, an idea born from classical thermodynamics, is a quantitative entity, and not a qualitative one. That means that entropy is not something that is fundamentally intuitive, but something that is fundamentally defined via an equation, via mathematics applied to physics. Remember in your various travails, that entropy is what the equations define it to be. There is no such thing as an "entropy", without an equation that defines it."
Thus, unless the formula of entropy can be applied equally to political systems, like it can to the transfer of information as bits, or the transfer of heat between two interacting equilibrium states, political systems are not entropic. That is a misapplication of the term. So, on a physical level, entropy does apply to a human being, in so far as we are a giant collection of atoms, and more fundamentally, quantum bits, containing information that follows the rules of entropy, eventually settling to a point of state-wide equilibrium, and indeed this phenomena affects the universe as a whole, meaning billions of years from now, stuff will seemingly stop interacting and reach a universe wide equilibrium, but life is funny in that it is good in taking stuff from outside a given system (say food from the world around me), to keep the information inside a given system from reaching a state of equilibrium (in this case, keeping the information in my body amazingly intact, despite changes in the specific parts and atoms and so forth storing that information).
Many people bandy about the term entropy without realizing that it is actually a concrete mathematical description of a statistical phenomena that applies to a variety of physical phenomena, such as thermodyanmics and information theory. Now, I suppose there is some possibility that if one found a way to measure a poltical system in terms of Bits or something, one might find that it follows the same mathematical formulas of entropy. But since we can't really isolate a political system (political systems being an abstract concept after all, not a readily describable concrete phenomena), its hard to imagine how we would go about doing it. So, I would be wary of describing political systems as entropic, since we really dont have any basis for applying the term to political systems. Basically, without the equation, it's not really entropy.