Artificial Life

I'm glad I'm not the only one weirded out by this. Joshua Claybourn thinks this is straight out of Mary Shelley.

Frankly I'd just like to take this opportunity to state my opinion on bioethics. It sucks. I trust the moral judgement of a bioethicist about as far as I can throw said bioethicist. This is because a few people I know from college wanted to go into that field and they were some of the most morally judgemental yet morally inferior people I know. Basically they were both haughty and bossy. Granted this is a small sample of the bioethicist profession, but it basically formed my opinion and everything I have heard from the field confirms it.

Long story short, I'd love to hear a bioethicist step up and say "we should not pursue this avenue of research, it is highly unethical and immoral". Instead what I usually hear is "well if you do the following ethical sommersaults, this is perfectly fine." Great. Basically bioethicists seem to be in the position of providing convenient justifications for the use of questionable technologies. They are not ethical auditors, my experience has been that they are professional rationalizers and enablers.

My experience is also that this is what happens when you talk about ethics without talking about morals. Ethics is a code of action. It doesn't have anything to do with right or wrong. That is morality's area of expertise. You can be perfectly ethical (an have integrity too by the way) and still be a perfectly horrible person. You just have to be consistent about it.