Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !askusa@discuss.online
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
For the kinds of gene therapy we currently have, it wouldn't make that much of a difference for society, but could have a positive effect for people affected by conditions that can be treated with it. Although as I understand it, those treatments are far from perfect and do frequently have adverse effects as well.
If we're talking the sci-fi kind of gene therapy that could stop aging, make people more intelligent etc, that would be an entirely different story. It would have massive societal ramifications and I think especially under capitalism, they wouldn't be good. It would increase inequality by massive amounts and basically turn the rich elites into their own, genetically-superior species.
Same situation with cybernetic implants. The rich would have infinite eidetic memory and computation power built into their skull. The poor would be forced to have muscle implants if they wanted a job, or worse, much much worse.
I mean, Cyberpunk 2077 does have construction workers being contractually obligated to receive strength-augmenting implants that are low quality and frequently malfunction and/or drive the wearer to homicidal insanity.
Just think what a company could do with a full motor control interface to their workers. The worker themselves could be asleep or in a virtual world and not have to worry about all that pesky work.
... why wouldn't they just use robots?
Because other humans will pay for the feel of genuine humans.
For unthinking construction labor?
No, for rubbing up against.