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Sam Altman and husband reportedly working to genetically engineer babies from having hereditary disease
(www.the-independent.com)
TIL Sam is gay
this post was submitted on 17 Nov 2025
218 points (92.9% liked)
Technology
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Odd way to learn altman is gay.
Kinda shocked I've never seen a "worlds richest gay man!" Headline. That feels like low hanging fru-
Does Thiel not have more money?
Thiel killed the outlet that outed him.
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Gay is only bad if the poors do it, of course /s
Honestly I don't think it's any of our business. Even rich assholes are allowed to have a private life. Although with some (Musk, Trump) that private life is so fucked up it's impossible to ignore, but generally I'm totally fine with not knowing who they fuck.
I worry more about that he is a full blown psycho.
The ability to reduce diseases and disorders in newborns sounds wonderful, until you find out which techno-fascist is behind the movement.
The other issue I have is that this is an example of a recurring issue in which the tech obsessed ultra wealthy declare their plan to solve a problem for which a very straightforward policy solution already exists.
We don't need tech to extend lives or feed the hungry. We just need to remove the paywalls to existing resources.
Yeah, here's an easy way to prevent most birth defects:
Free nutritious food
Regulating toxic chemicals
Prenatal education and healthcare
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In before this turns into "I want my baby to have blue eyes and 150 IQ"
It's an interesting ethical debate.
I have a hereditary condition which passes only by the X chromosome, so should I, as a man, abort a daughter? Because now the risk is too high and I've elected to simply not have children. It would be great if I could fix the single swapped base pair that would otherwise cause disfigurement and life-long health problems.
Yeah I'm always conflicted. Like eugenics is the end goal for these fascists but also... We should try to prevent hereditary defects rtct
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so all Lemmy takes from this article is that Sam Altman is gay.
Tim Cook, Sam Altman, Peter Thiel.
We have enough data points to suggest that being gay doesn't insulate you from being greedy and corrupt.
That's important, too.
Gay people are just as shitty as everyone else. They're no better or no worse. They just have sex with people of the same gender.
Who you want to fuck REALLY doesn't matter, like, at all, imo, in the grand scheme of things.
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We have a code of conduct training at work that includes and anti corruption segment (nothing weird, just stuff like "a vendor buying lunch at a sales meeting is fine, but no gifts or having lunch at extremely expensive places", and "some places give small symbolic gifts around holidays, usually a pastry. That's fine. Do not accept a $500 pastry")
A couple years ago they updated the module and the person engaging in non-obvious corrupt business practices became gay in passing. The overwhelming response by a lot of the company was "yay! We made it guys! They realized that we like bribes too! I feel so seen".
If someone was going to accept a $500 pastry, I'd put my money on the gay guy.
(It's me.)
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They do realize that this is how most zombie apocalypse movies start. Genetic tapering to stop diseases.
Yeah that's fiction for a reason
I mean the zombie part, sure.
Do you really think in the hands of Silicon Valley techbros this ain’t gonna get ugly?
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The same guy who admitted he couldn't raise his child without ChatGPT btw.
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I'm not sure I get the universal negativity to this. Like sure, Altman sucks as a person, and an individual having enough money to significantly bankroll research like this is a sign of an economic failure, but surely curing or preventing genetic disease is just about the most uncontroversial use human genetic modification could have?
He's a bad person and he's always lying.
It'll only be available for the super rich, will expand to other augmentations/engineering, and will result in further reinforcing social mobility boundaries.
The response to something beneficial being only available to the rich shouldn't be to avoid developing that thing, it should be to make it available to everyone. The failures of the US healthcare and economic systems don't suddenly make developing new medical techniques a bad thing. Human augmentation is another issue from curing genetic disease, though I'd personally argue that wouldn't be a bad cause either, with the same caveat about it availability. It at least has more potential to improve somebody's life somewhere down the line than just buying a yacht with his ill gotten gains or some other useless rich person toy would.
If you can't share basic healthcare with everyone, you're not going to share genetic healthcare, either.
The government shouldn't subsidize the development of super-healthcare (or pass conveniently targeted policies that enable its development at the expense of citizens) when all the non-billionaires get nothing but promises of I'll-totally-share-it-you-guys from the same guy who says we're-almost-at-AGI-we-just-need-another-trillion-dollars-I-swear.
The solution to billionaires having "ill-gotten gains" isn't "well, let's make sure he spends it responsibly". It's give the damn money back.
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Generally speaking (by theory subscription), moral evaluations of an action consider the state of the agent.
"Is this a good technology?" And "Is Sam Altman doing good?" Are two radically different questions with radically different answers.
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"What's bad with eugenics for the rich?"
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Wait, this guy's gay?
Neoliberal utopia. The wealthy elite destroying the world and forcing eugenics on the masses fly a rainbow flag
Its working.
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So we’re skipping the Bell Riots and straight into Eugenics War?
Engineer some humans who can survive in zero gravity without peeing out their bone minerals. Humans who can survive hard radiation in space without having their cells crippled from destroyed DNA.
Maybe start with simple organisms. Like algae. :)
I’d just like to have to trim my nails less frequently
I’d just like to have to trim my nails less frequently
i used to think like you, then i started (ab)using my hands for activities that wear them out. Now i'm glad that they're growing sufficiently fast to replace/renew
I see you've also purchased a new scratching post
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ah, ok, so GATTACA is up next. got it.
Anytime any non scientist wants to genetically engineer babies you should get very worried
When crypto or ai bros want to do that get outright scared
get outright scared
Doesn't help.
If it works as good as AI, people will be chronic liars, have multiple fingers, and be annoying attention whores always asking if they can "help" you.
This is the usual front to further develop "designer baby" tech (which we already have, it's just the use is considered unethical). Mask investment as "saving the children" and altruistic to later flip the tech to billionaire friends so they can make little aryans on a d5 roll for a an AC of 1... Much like the open that turned for profit...
Oh hell no, don't bring Jurassic Park to the real world, please.
(JP did this with dinos, but this is the exact thing that movie warned about, just in this case with humans instead of dinos)
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