Nick Bostrom Quotes

In the last century, as we learned more about genes, we were able to devise ways of accelerating evolution.

Every orchid or rose or lizard or snake is the work of a dedicated and skilled breeder. There are thousands of people, amateurs and professionals, who devote their lives to this business. Now imagine what will happen when the tools of genetic engineering become accessible to these people.

The advance of genetic engineering makes it quite conceivable that we will begin to design our own evolutionary progress.

Many families would like to avoid burdening future generations with inherited diseases such as haemophilia or severe developmental disorders. But most would think it wrong to edit the genes that influence the 'normal' range of human variation, from eye colour to intelligence or athletic ability.

With worms you can just change genes at random and see if you can find a mutant that does what you want it to do.

The genomics revolution, proteomics, metabolomics, all of these 'omics' that sound so terrific on grants and on business plans. What we're doing is we are seizing control of our evolutionary future. I mean we're essentially using technology to just jam evolution into fast-forward.

All the food we eat - every grain of rice and kernel of corn - has been genetically modified. None of it was here before mankind learned to cultivate crops. The question isn't whether our food has been modified, but how.

If any one age really attains, by eugenics and scientific education, the power to make its descendants what it pleases, all men who live after it are the patients of that power.

there is no doubt that anyone who had a fair knowledge of the principles of genetics, and who was given control over the matings of human beings, could in the course of a very few generations, produce a large number of very diverse types. He could breed a race of idiots, a race of dwarfs, a race of giants, an albino race, an insane race, a race of moral imbeciles, a race which would almost invariably get drunk in the presence of alcohol, a race of preeminent mental ability, or a race of unusual artistic talent. The task would be easy, as it would involve only the isolation of existing strains of the human species.

UNFIT HUMAN TRAITS Such As Feeblemindedness, Epilepsy, Criminality, Insanity, Alcoholism and Many Others Run In Families And Are Inherited in Exactly The Same Was As Colour In Guinea Pigs. If ALL MARRIAGES WERE EUGENIC, We could BREED OUT Most Of This Unfitness In THREE GENERATIONS.

If you get very fine, accurate, and inexpensive control over your genome, you can fundamentally change the kind of organism you are. You are extending human capacity.

Now that we can read and write the genetic code, put it in digital form and translate it back into synthesized life, it will be possible to speed up biological evolution to the pace of social evolution.

I suspect any worries about genetic engineering may be unnecessary. Genetic mutations have always happened naturally, anyway.

In the future, I can imagine that we will genetically modify ourselves using the genes that have doubled our life span since we were chimpanzees.

Cloning will enable mankind to reach eternal life.

What's different here is that we have now technologies that allow these life science companies to bypass classical breeding. That's what makes it both powerful and exciting.

We're moving from reading the genetic code to writing it.

I'm a genetic optimist.

In college, I had an early introduction to classical genetics from Professor Dan Lindsley, also an extraordinary teacher who influenced me greatly.

What the public needs to understand is that these new technologies, especially in recombinant DNA technology, allow scientists to bypass biological boundaries altogether.

Here at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, we have genetically rearranged various viruses and bacteria as part of our medical research. In fact, we have been able to create entirely new types of DNA molecules by splicing together the genetic information from different organisms - recombinant DNA.

If we could honestly promise young couples that we knew how to give them offspring with superior character, why should we assume they would decline? Common sense tells us that if scientists find ways to greatly improve human capabilities, there will no stopping the public from happily seizing them.

Now we have technology where we can modify the genomics of individuals by gene transfer and genetic meddling, we may find that people will want to modify their children, enhance their intelligence, their strength and their beauty and all the other so-called desirable characteristics.

Of course it is a very simple matter to identify genes which might modify intelligence or memory and start thinking about whether you want to enhance a human, and the next generation is going to have to deal with that issue. Should we be trying to enhance humans rather than trying to educate them and so on?

You can now modify the genes of large animals, and the largest animal we are concerned with is the human.