In time, we’ll all be enhanced–and not just our bodies. It won’t be cheating but improvement. Necessary even, for survival. From Anders Sandberg’s new Practical Ethics post about Transhumanism and performance enhancement:

“If we were to make a choice behind a veil of ignorance between a world where there was more talent to go around and a world with less talent, it seems that the reasonable choice is to choose the world of talent. We would probably also want to choose a world where talent was more equally distributed than one where it was less equal. But even the less talented people in a talented but unequal world could benefit from the greater prosperity and creativity.

In practice talent needs plenty of help to develop: without support and good teachers innate potential is unlikely to matter. So the ability to help kids develop their potential (and help them overcome their less able sides) is important for actualizing that talent. Without it none of the above worlds would be preferable. But figuring out how to cultivate and stimulate kids is hard. Hence, any information that could help do this better would be welcome.

So my basic stance is that if genetic information could personalize education well, go for it!

But… I am less convinced than the geneticists that we can actually do it, at least in the near future.”