Crosspost from my blog.

Moral deference

Sometimes when I bring up the subject of reprogenetics, people get uncomfortable. "So you want to do eugenics?", "This is going to lead to inequality.", "Parents are going to pressure their kids.". Each of these statements does point at legitimate concerns. But also, the person is uncomfortable, and they don't necessarily engage with counterpoints. And, even if they acknowledge that their stated concern doesn't make sense, they'll still be uncomfortable—until they think of another concern to state.

This behavior is ambiguous—I don't know what underlies the behavior in any given case. E.g. it could be that they're intent on pushing against reprogenetics regardless of the arguments they say, or it could be that they have good and true intuitions that they haven't yet explicitized. And in any case, argument and explanation is usually best. Still, I often get the impression that, fundamentally, what's actually happening in their mind is like this:

1. Reprogenetics... that's genetic engineering...


2. Other people are against that...


3. I don't know about it / haven't thought about it / am not going to stick my neck out about it...


4. So I'm going to [...]

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Outline:

(00:13 ) Moral deference

(02:30 ) Correlated failures

(05:04 ) The open problem

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First published:

November 11th, 2025

Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/jzy5qqRuqA9iY7Jxu/the-problem-of-graceful-deference-1

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.