Genetic Engineering

As I was cleaning up around my office, I came upon a notebook that was mostly empty. Flipping through the pages I discovered a random page of writing I did, presumably in college, of which I have no memory. I thought it was brilliant! LOL.

Are there limits to knowledge that people should have?

I don't believe it is physically possible to limit our knowledge. There are limits to what we can understand, but our curiosity is renewable. Logically, we would not be happy with having the means to discover all the "whys" and "hows" and not possess the freedom to exhaust them. At least, not to a single individual. Collectively we might be able to slow down progress, but we'd never be able to stop it while retaining cognitive awareness.

DNA is a mystery that will be solved. It raises logical questions with moral responses. Should we genetically engineer children? Prune the undesirable traits? We could, but is it right?

In my opinion, no. That is tampering with natural evolution. We are creating artificial conditions to speed up our adaptations based on a severely limited understanding of life itself, much less the planet, much less the time-space continuum, much less the impact our blind floundering in genetics will have on future generations.

This is the reasoning behind requiring people to reach age 16 before letting them drive a car. There are certain growth stages to complete, awareness to stimulate, consequences to grasp before giving someone power.

The main difference in self-fed evolution through genetic engineering versus natural evolution is that we are not changing by pressure from external factors, but rather out of aesthetic, subjective desire. This is not Darwinism, but a contrived evolution of selfishness.