Sixteen Volts

Noticing that my earlier post "Shall be the only law" was featured in Philosopher's Carnival 26, I looked through the other posts featured in this carnival. The post "Moral Expertise?" of Left2Right discusses a topic that also popped into my mind last night on the way home from work as I was reading Michael Shermer's book "The Borderlands of Science". What exactly makes a moral expert a real expert instead of just a pompous mountebank and charlatan?

If somebody really knows more than others about some particular topic, they should be able to demonstrate this by being able to modify objective reality more to their liking in ways that other people can't. For example, if I ever doubted that a doctor or a mechanic really has a correct and comprehensive knowledge about how the human body or an automobile works, we could have a contest of trying to cure a sick person or make a broken car run again. A real doctor and a real mechanic will fare much better than me in these tasks, so I would have no choice but to admit that their knowledge in their respective fields is superior.

(Or paraphrasing a comment of Tiedemies: if you really think you have a superior understanding, then quit yapping and prove this by building a machine that somehow makes life better.)

When I think of often-mentioned writers such as Leon Kass and Bill McKibben, I have to wonder what exactly it takes for someone to be an "expert" on ethics, especially bioethics. If we didn't know who was a bioethicist, what practical test that produces undeniable objective results could we arrange to find this out, the same way that we found out who is an expert in how the human body or automobiles work? What exactly is it that these people can do that others just can't? In what sense do the knowledge and opinions of bioethicists trump, say, my knowledge and opinions about the same topics? How did they acquire this expertise? In short, how do we know that these people are not just making stuff up as they go and pretending to be experts, safe in knowing that the things they claim are never falsifiable or verifiable in the real world?

I while back after I read Bill McKibben's book "Enough", which was later turned to a hit movie starring Jennifer Lopez, I started to wonder about the arguments that bioethicists use to prove that nothing is ever allowed. The book's main attack is against genetic engineering, but it opposes essentially all other technological progress. The general anti-technological attitude of the book is especially hostile against nanotechnology, but the book also opposes computers getting faster since technological progress causes unemployment. Right now computers are just right for humanity's needs, but if Moore's law gets to proceed uninterrupted for the next thirty years or so, some poor guy somewhere will lose his job since a computer or a robot will do the same task essentially for free. Bad robot!

When I read McKibben's book, I had to ask if I have perhaps misunderstood something, since the arguments of the book were so... fucking stupid. If I distill them into a numbered list, please tell me which of the following are not advocated by bioethicists, or the leftists in general?

1. Even though diversity is good, all real differences between people are bad. Therefore children shouldn't be put to school or sports team genetically manipulated to grow smarter or stronger, because once they get superior they will enslave the dumber and weaker kids.
2. Genetic engineering takes away the freedom of choice from people to whom it is applied, unlike the naturally inherited genes that everybody gets to freely choose themselves and which don't limit the person in any way since they don't even have any effect on anything.
3. When people feel an immediate repugnance and strong emotional opposition against something such as nuclear power or genetic engineering, that repugnance itself proves that something to be objectively bad... except when this immediate repugnance is felt against, say, gay people or people of other races.
4. Poverty, weakness, misery and stupidity are the highest forms of beauty, morals and nobility, and in fact they are the inviolable cornerstones of humanity itself.
5. It doesn't matter what the average person is like smarts-wise. If the average IQ of mankind was 150, everything would be just the same as now or even if the average IQ was 50, since intelligence can make at most a positional difference, since only the top n% of people get to go to the best universities anyways regardless of the actual intelligence distribution.
6. Technological disaster movies such as "Terminator", "Matrix" and "6th Day" are accurate documentaries of what will happen in the future unless we strike back against technology now.
7. Genetic propensity for Huntington's chorea and cystic fibrosis are beautiful and important and most certainly worth saving, and it is in fact our moral duty to maintain these diseases for the future generations, even though it is immoral for us to leave them even a tiniest crumb of nuclear waste buried deep underground.
8. Genetic screening must not be allowed, since every sperm and egg must have the right to an equal probability to creating a baby.
9. Free market, competition and technological progress are evil since they take away some people's holy right to live on other people's expense.
10. The average human lifespan is already far too long, and it should be decades shorter, since death and waiting for death are glorious things that build character and necessary so that we wouldn't get too proud and cocky and forget what it means to be a human.

So there. If any of these completely sick and depraved principles that I could see only very sick and depraved people advocating is not something that bioethicists really do believe and advocate, please feel free to correct me at this point.

At the end of his book McKibben grudgingly admits a fact that has been evident at least for me for years now: despite their superficial differences, leftists and Christians are together on the same side against science and technology in every essential question, since they understand that the little power that they have over other people diminishes even more with every technological step of progress. The book even presents practical examples of real-world alliances of these groups. And McKibben doesn't even know about the Finnish political scene, in which the political platforms of the Green Party and Christian Party, once you erase the references to Mother Earth and God, are virtually indistinguishable. And I would guess that it's the same way in most other European countries.

McKibben also argues that free-market eugenics in which parents could choose to buy or not buy better genes for their children is not really free, since if they don't make this choice in a competitive society, their "natural" kid will not fare as well as genetically improved kids. Well, I guess that we can now drop the lefto-Christian idea of genes being meaningless! It's almost howlingly funny how absolute environmental determinists can suddenly become absolute genetic determinists without even realizing it, whenever this suits their rhetorical purposes. (Shermer also noted this same irony in his book.) Using the same logic, I guess we should end all education, since getting or not getting a degree is not really a "free" choice any more, since very few high school dropouts get hired to positions of power, expertise and responsibility.

McKibben's silly book also reminded me of my old observation of how leftists and the liberal arts crowd love to disparage science and engineering as "cold" and something that lacks "soul" and "beauty", whereas leftists and liberal arts crowd are morally superior since they have an inherent ability to understand what is beautiful and right. They must therefore control scientists and engineers essentially the same way that a wagon driver controls his horses: he understands that horses can actually make the wagon move in a way he never could, but he is the master who ultimately decides which way the horses should be pulling. Sometimes the stupid beast can be given a sugar cube as a reward for being obedient, but they should never get any ideas and forget who the real master is.

This whole idea must have emerged in some bizarro world where everything is upside down compared to our world. Instead of a wagon driver and his horse, a far better analogy from the animal kingdom would be an intestinal parasite and a lion. The idea that leftists and liberal arts crowd are needed to make thing beautiful and good is so very grotesque since in reality, these people always tend to worship ugliness, misery and filth. Whenever something really is beautiful and works well and generates wealth and happiness, these people are quick to explain how it is really bad and ugly and immoral even though us less enlightened creatures can't comprehend this but believe our lying eyes. For example, we might erroneously believe that a blank concrete wall is beautiful in its form and functionality, but the leftist understands that messing the wall with graffiti gives it "authenticity" and makes it more "real". Unlike us, the enlightened leftist also understands that the greatest art is made of feces.

I guess that we should all thank these people for their endless energy to unselfishly guide and instruct us lesser beings, even though we so often pigheadedly reject their motherly advice. Fortunately, leftists did get the power and have been able to implement their ideas in many places, resulting in superior equality and harmony and comfort of living in these places. Things that are this important simply can't be left to the free market where people would be able to reject them if they don't like them, so they must be imposed on all people by force if necessary.

Posted by Ilkka Kokkarinen on Tuesday, February 21, 2006 at 7:46 AM