We're going to the beach! And that caravan of SWAT vans in the way can just go fuck themselves.

Yeah, I saw it too. Came here to reference it. Is it this one? Roujin Z?

Jail is where they throw you while you're under arrest.
Prison is where they send you after you're convicted.

Some sentences are served out in jails if they're small/short enough. Drunks get thrown in jail.

I never understood the deletionist mentality on Wikipedia. But there's a whole group of people that want to remove information from the public view.

I semi-understand the idea that this "very important" encyclopedia is "too important" for such things as a page for each character from a game I never played. And somehow by culling these frivolous thing they somehow make wikipedia higher quality on the whole? Maybe? Kinda? I don't think these people understand how search works.

There are the obvious shills and PR people that want to sweep things under the rug. These are nefarious and to be found and fought.

There are fools who think it's expensive to store this information. As if an edit-war to remove it was cheaper.

I understand people don't want articles that are just free advertising. But I doubt anyone is going to delete the page for Monanto.

But fundamentally, I just don't get their worldview.

That's one of the more reasonable proposals for how the federal government could help bootstrap a space-faring civilization.

So, it'd pay out on launch failures, deaths, and shield them from lawsuits in case everything goes tits up?

Just where the fuck do I do that?
Did you even read my post?
Did you catch any of the four examples where I showcase what can and cannot be automated?

You want your kids to be stupid. Wow dude. I know that's not exactly what you said, or meant to imply. But face it: Intelligence carries a burden and ignorance is bliss. And you're saying you wish your kids had more of the latter.

From a professor..... Wow.

Sorry if this comes off as judgmental, or harsh, or whateverthefuck, but seriously. We're fighting the good fight against anti-intellectualism, barely keeping a grip on democracy, striving to reach a sustainable society before the oil runs dry or some idiot pushes the red button. In a time when the current trends are dependent upon further technological advances, here you are as one of the pinnacles of society and you just don't give a fuck. You'd rather your kids took it easy, didn't have to work so hard, didn't have to think so hard, and were just simply happy. Let someone else cure cancer, make fusion viable, or colonize mars.

And I get it. I do. You want a better life for your kids. That's commendable. You've got problems, who doesn't, and you want your kids to avoid them. It's just... fuck man... I guess I have big hopes for the future and thought more of professors.

Just the one. And I desperately hope that he's a smart little cookie. Because it will make life so much better for him. And if he doesn't have the natural talent like I did, I hope that I can instill a work ethic that'll get him through life.

My brother had some rough patches, and thankfully he's through the worst of it. But now he's 35 with no real career to speak of. His resume has a giant gapping hole that is hard to explain. His body isn't going to last in his current job for another decade and it's the sort that he needs to fight for every year so they hire him again. It's not all doom and gloom for him, but well, the family worries.

A happy kid is good thing. But I don't think one genetically selected to be easy-going and carefree is a good thing.

Sure, I guess. A "better person" would be one that tries to be a better person rather than simply being content and happy with whatever they're handed. Sure, if they could be happy while struggling with something that's outside their safety zone, that'd be great. And if they find the "happily tenacious" gene, I'd be down with switching that on. But currently I see a sliding scale between being content and being driven. If geneticists selected for kids to be happy, I imagine they'd have a batch of kids that didn't really see the point in studying and working hard.

Whoa whoa whoa. There are a shit-ton of blue-collar jobs that aren't menial. Mechanics have a full spectrum of skills from noob to master. And a certified areospace mechanic can make some serious bank. In short, that's a blue collar job that isn't a dead end. No, I was talking about actual dead-end jobs: retail, fry-cook, maid, fruit-picker. These are jobs which simply have no career advancement and don't develop any skills. As anyone can do them, you face a lot of competition from people that didn't have the same opportunities that your typical GENE-SELECTED BABY FROM WEALTHY PARENTS have. It's a common trope that the rich or gifted kid is expected to "succeed" (which carries it's own problems). That will be expanded if you also have tweaked genes.

Yeah, and as an engineer, I have to do so very much less then a fruit picker to get enough money to do the things in my "actual life". Trust me, life is simply easier and better with a higher income.

Well, in a modern first-world society that isn't some libertarian hell-scape, the answer is because I'm taxed and he's not. And I'm subsidizing his lifestyle. But hey, if he's got a job, he's probably still a net-gain for society. Statistically though, the poorer he is the less likely it is that he will be happy, or be able to support himself. It's a real roll of the dice, but I hope to load the dice a little by making sure my kid has good grades.

Also, what does he do when he's a 40 year old laid-off bus-boy with no marketable skills? Have kids and hope one of them will support him? Uh........

Point taken about the ambitious jerks. It's a balancing act really.

I'd like to see those menial jobs replaced with automation if possible. I mean, it removes a mind-numbingly boring job of monotony.
garbage truck worker They've already automated the process of picking up the trash-can and dumping it. Now it's just a driver. And with self-driving cars, hopefully that will be automated as well.
toll booth operator Really? Come on dude, are you even trying?
road maintenance crewmember There's actually a lot that goes into road building. And they're all legacy systems with the nightmares that come with that. But hey, filling potholes might be able to be automated.
janitor There will always be janitors and general handymen, but for something as boring as, say, sweeping or mopping? Sure, roomba to the rescue.
It's not that I want these people to be out of work. It's that I don't think we need to dedicate man-power to these tasks. I want those kids that would grow up into a ditch-digger position instead go on to do something a little more rewarding and productive.

Providing opportunities to your kids is about the best you can do. But how the hell do you distinguish "choosing" and "settling"?

Well, he was perfectly peaceful... you know, before the murder thing.

You have that backwards. ADD mean you noticed the sabre-tooth tiger and lived longer than your geeky friend who managed to focus on trying to build a fire. ADD is a positive trait if you have to constantly watch your back.

And mother nature just didn't give a shit what happened to your eyesight past 30, but point taken.

There is always selection, some people have (more) kids than others. Some people don't have kids. The "natural" aspect is meaningless and doesn't matter worth a damn. The question is merely what is being selected for and what is not. Perfect example is ADD, while it might have helped kids survive being hunted, it doesn't help hunters. Nor fire-builders, nor programmers, etc. But "helping" doesn't equate with selection anymore. Sadly, the movie Idiocracy kinda hits this one on the head. The poor and the stupid out breed the smart of the wealthy. It doesn't have a good impact on society. And I think is this what you're getting at, but phrases like:

That's a euphamism with horrible consequences. Really, trying to kill off the poor, or steralize all the blacks, or steer the genetic boat in general are all really bad ideas that have been tried before with larger negative consequences than they could ever hope to outweigh with positive impact.

No, actually, it doesn't. While selection is still happening, and Idiocracy might be in effect, we really don't have to change. With sufficient outbreeding (as opposed to inbreeding for freaks) we can maintain a stable baseline genetic structure and simple carry on. The crocodile and nautilus haven't changed much for millions of years. They found a niche and didn't have reason to change. We could do the same.

Correct. And when people talk about this, they mean "relative to today's standards". And that's a perfectly reasonable way of talking about it.

But this is not a zero-sum game where it only matters how smarter you are than the next guy. It really does have an impact if EVERYONE is smarter on the whole.

Fun fact: If we never re-adjusted the IQ scale and somehow compared the IQ scores of people today to everyone in history, we would score higher then those of the past. People have gotten smarter. And this is a good thing. While it might mean that someone that could easily pick up orbital mechanics might be the dumbest person in the room and be forced to sweep floors for a living, it means good things for society, janitors included. Because they can play Kerbal when they get home.

I think you're working quite hard at being depressed about this. IQ isn't everything. Genes aren't everything. This is one of those lessons that sci-fi helps us learn before stumbling over it. Rest assured that some people will still stumble. It'll be a long long time before we can select against fools.

As for "reducing humanity", yeah man, we're just a few genetic markers away from apes. That's how works.

A society full of geeks. How bad could it be?

OH SHIT! It'll be like the local hackerspace's mailing list ALL THE TIME. Dear god no.

Also, Gregarious Man would be a thing.

Really? You want a kid with no ambition? One that will happily work at a dead-end job and bum around with his friends rather than put in the effort to be a better person.

awwwww, that's adorable. Especially coming from a Spock parody. But that whole "happiness" thing is mostly on the shoulders of the parents, and doesn't matter if the kid is smart, dumb, rich, or poor. Once they hit the real world, then OH YEAH, those things matter for a lot. Hence why most parents try to steer their kid towards homework rather than making sure they're happy. I think a balanced approach is best.

No actually, it's sadly not that high on a lot of parents list. Many appear to be concerned with hair color, eye color, skin tone, height, weight, and athletic ability. And while they would be willing to screen for health concerns, intelligence appears to be around that same level of side-concern. As long as the baby is white and blonde.

Yeah, right now the geneticists are all theorizing academics that want to make the world a better place. Wait till it becomes a typical business model, and they'll align their ideas with the market. Sigh...

It was a cautionary tale to not focus too deeply on the genes one has rather than the potential one has. An invalid can best those with superior genes if they've got no fire, and a perfectly peaceful man can commit a horrible murder if everyone believes him to be perfectly peaceful.

Luckily, Einsteins brain has been sequenced. The results aren't publicly available, but that's not the sort of information that's going to disappear. If we can identify "creativity and genius", then all the better. Just like we can identify intelligence. And having the right set of genes isn't the end-all-be-all of who you are. Even if you were a clone of Einstein, or say, one of his kids, that doesn't guarantee you're going to go on to do great things.

You're right that IQ isn't everything. But GATTACA was most certainly a blueprint for future eugenics, and once it's available I really don't see an alternative.