"Immortality without purpose is also hollow."
“The Crusades, the voyage of Columbus, and the slaughters of the Spanish conquistadors who followed, are powerful examples of human exploration and human encounters with the unknown. They teach us that the realm of human dominance can be radically enlarged by human imagination and courage. Equally importantly, they teach us that without a belief in human dignity and equality, the cost of such dominance is genocidal human rights violations. They also caution us to be suspicious of stated motives and cover stories; although filled with missionary zeal, most of these adventurers and explorers sought primarily fame and fortune.“
“We could use our technology to explore outer space with such robots, but our current fascination is focused on inner space. Instead of expanding our minds and our perspectives as a species by pondering the mysteries of outer space with its possibilities of other life forms, we are turning inward and contemplating ourselves at a microscopic level. The bew biology perhaps better described as the new genetics or the “genetics age”, suggests a biology-based immortality alternative to a digital brain in a body of metal and plastic: changing and “enhancing” our human capabilities by altering our genes at a molecular level. Or, as James Watson, the discoverer of the structure of DNA, famously put it, ‘We used to think our future was in our stars, now we know our future is in our genes.’”
“… in the face of the Holocaust and nuclear weapons, genetic engineering appears almost benign. But this is deceptive because genetic engineering has the capacity to change the meaning of what it is to be human. There are limits to how far we can go in changing our nature without changing our humanity and our basic human values. Because it is the meaning of humanness (our distinctness from other animals) that has given birth to our concepts of both human dignity and human rights, altering our nature threatens to undermine our concepts of both human dignity and human rights.”
> Regarding the last 2 paragraphs, I read a book titled CRISPR People by Henry Greely which I found super informative on issues related to gene editing. Worth a read!
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