Comment by ArtWomb | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ArtWomb | Hacker News Reader

We may be headed to a possible future in which technology makes it possible to decouple "romantic" impulses from the reproductive drive. Surrogacy at scale, artificial wombs, even gamete design and editing are all possible within this generation's lifetime. Concomitant relaxations in regulations regarding sexual work and the commodification of sexual satisfaction would be one possible outcome. The philosophic quandary then shifts from sex to the nature of love. Is it simply another innate need with primal place atop the human hierarchy? Or an evolution-tuned biochemical survival mechanism that can itself be synthesized akin to the "pregnancy substitutes" in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World?

Again, back to Plato (as all inquiries lead), but this time consider The Republic and its ideal family-state. Plato envisioned a community of parents, and a dissolution of the edicts of traditional marriage. In which the entire village parented each child as if they were their own. And privileges associated with hereditary and parentage begin to disappear in deference to the needs of the state.

Another modern evolution in traditional practice is the use of Tantric and Orgasmic Meditation. Hindu philosophy usually places desire beyond prosperity, knowledge, duty and spiritual perfection. But it is fairly easy to see how cults wholly consecrated to Venus may arise.

The technology nightmare that you suggest does fit neatly into the ideal in Plato's republic. Remember as well that in the Republic, it wasn't just that the city parented each child... but that the city was the parent to each child, and children were unaware of their birth parents. It doesn't work -- the idealized creche in The Republic in reality is a land of neglect and a ripe target for abusers.

While they aren't necessarily fun and are probably too inflexible, the themes and positions on sexuality that you find in many religions are rooted fundamentally in humanity.

Personally, I have always found The Republic to be offensive to human dignity. Leaders aren't philosopher kings. Guardians aren't selflessly devoted to the ideals of the state. A future of sex workers as industrialized sex toys, military dictatorship, outsourced pregnancy and genetic engineering is a dark future inded.

Knowing what we know about human psychology, emotions and behavior, this proposal alone make me think that Plato did not understood much about those. You can't raise 30 children "like few of your own" not even if another 30 adults mess with that too.

There are certain tribes in human history that did exactly this for centuries.

> Surrogacy at scale, artificial wombs, even gamete design and editing are all possible within this generation's lifetime.

No, they aren't. Moreover, surrogacy is just as unethical as slavery, expect it to be banned worldwide soon.

Wait, what? What's wrong with surrogacy if everybody involved consents?

(Playing devil's advocate)

The child doesn't consent to a life of being outside of that social norm. One could make the argument that it's in the same ballpark as raising a child in religious extremism.

I know you were playing devil's advocate, but that argument can be said of any child. It's functionally slavery to be born in Africa since the living conditions are terrible. It's functionally slavery to conceive a black child in America since it's statistically likely to be poor. It's functionally slavery to have a child born to rich parents since there is a high likelihood of emotional abuse due to drugged out mothers and workaholic fathers.

That is an absolute cavalcade of stereotypes. Even then it has a major hole. In your vision those children will still be born into the societal norms of their larger group.

Then we shouldn't allow gays to breed with lesbians to create a timeshare child. The same is true that the US should have actively stopped the intermarriage of blacks and whites for the same reason. India needs to stop the procreation of Christians since the social norm is Hindu.

An absolute false equivalence, save the "timeshare child" thing, which sounds disastrous for the well being of the child. Nobody in their right mind would argue that a child split between two homes is a preferable state. Regardless, there was no argument of banning anything made, so you've descended into hyperbole.

Would you not want to ban slavery? Do you want to keep these scientifically created children in their chains as the OP suggested they were in? You monster!

And just to play devil's advocate against that argument in turn... the child didn't consent to being born. In fact, in most existing legal systems, children don't consent to much at all until the age of consent. And arguing that giving birth to a child without abiding by all social norms is immoral is an extremely slippery slope in and of itself. At least eugenics was (ostensibly, of course) concerned mostly with measurable traits, this is arguably worse.

No one chooses to be born, let alone in the manner in which they were born.

This attitude is so foreign to me that you could very well be a Marsian. Rich people exploiting poor people to bare the risks and burdens of pregnancy and labor? Have you even considered the degree of desperation one would need to be in to agree to such an arrangement?

Is it really exploitation if you pay someone who is well informed 50k [0]? Are there not legitimate cases where someone has significant risk of carrying a child themselves (e.g. extremely tiny body and hips)? Modern medicine has greatly reduced the risk - if you find someone who is informed, doesn't have these same risk factors and well compensated I honestly don't see a problem with it.

There very well may be cases where the surrogate is being exploited, but I contest that the idea as a whole is fundamentally unethical.

[0] - https://www.westcoastsurrogacy.com/surrogate-program-for-int...

Yes. I don't like this kind of rationalization where one lifts up edge-cases without regard to its proportionality. - "I was able to buy a really nice house after discovering Herbalife".

If you pay attention you will discover that ethics does not ever rest on the fundamental essence of an idea, but on the particular human circumstances in which it most often occurs. By stripping away those circumstances, and adopting the most optimistic view possible, you are cherry-picking: all things can be ethical when you remove them from reality and imagine they only occur under the most favorable interpretation.

There is a theory under which totalitarian dictatorship may be benevolent, but we consider it unethical for politicians or the military to establish one, because reality differs from theory.

Likewise, professors dating students or managers dating direct reports can be totally consensual and free from coercion. It is unethical nonetheless, because we recognize what happens in practice is more important than the rare counterexample.

Do not confuse ethics with moral absolutism!

Thank you, I appreciate your reply and for you altering my thinking in a much more constructive manner than the other poster.

I feel that's rather a failure of the social safety net rather than something inherently immoral about surrogacy. You could certainly say the same about joining the military, or taking a hard manual labor job.

I don't think anyone should be forced by circumstance to do any of these things; they should be a completely voluntary option for people who are kept safe from poverty through through a functioning welfare system.

Why do we need to rationalize these things with a hypothetical best-case scenario?

Well, I live in a country that does have a socialized welfare system. So the best-case scenario isn't entirely hypothetical. Everyone who earns money pays ~50-75% of their income in various taxes, and everyone who hits economic or medical hardship gets enough help that they'll survive and keep a minimum of dignity. No one starves, no one has to be homeless, no one is forced to work a job that ruins their mental or physical health, although some do come close before they are diagnosed and get permanent (paid) medical leave.

Almost no one dies from diagnosed and treatable diseases, with a few exceptions in cases where treatment is extremely expensive and ineffective (e.g. treatment costs $1 million per year and increases life expectancy by 2 years).

We do still have drug addicts, homeless people, people with massive gambling debts, people with untreated psychological illnesses and prostitutes of many types.

I think it's an interesting philosophical discussion to which degree those who suffer the most on the lowest rungs of my society are victims (in the sense that society should have done more to help them). The vast majority are certainly _offered_ a large amount of help. Some seem unable or unwilling to accept help. Many do accept help, but keep making self-destructive decisions, and it is considered unethical to use force to stop them. Most receive help and live decent lives.

Interestingly, acts like surrogacy, prostitution and donating blood or plasma for money is still illegal here. Even though few better systems could be devised to ensure that on one is forced to take part in these against better judgement. "No one should be allowed to sell their body" is a mantra you'll hear a lot, but there hasn't been a very comprehensive discussion about the pros and cons of this.

I think it's important to emphasize that in this context there's an explicit mention of scale. Surrogacy as something of the future. Almost as an institution. For this scale to be possible, an exploitative relationship between the buyer and seller is required. It's a prerequisite. Otherwise there wouldn't even be a mention of it, since it would be at the negligible scale of a friend or family member donating a kidney to a loved one.

I don't think an exploitative relationship is implied or required here, but it's certainly a big danger (probably the biggest) one would have to be super alert for if this was to be performed at any scale (which exists already, by the way).

E.g., I heard that Minnesota has some sort of routine in place for voluntary surrogacy, which costs the adoptive parents on the order of $100k, of which only ~25k goes to the birthing mother. (A large part of the cost is administration and health checkups/treatment/insurance).

It doesn't sound right to me that only 25% of the proceeds should go to the star of the show, so to speak. But this doesn't imply that it is impossible to do this ethically. Regulation that's well thought-out, as well as a sound, pre-existing social welfare net, is critical.

How do you imagine this would scale in any sense of that word without it?

Without strong regulation and a social safety net? Very badly. It shouldn't be done. Couldn't disagree with you on that.

Note: I had the same question. Below are some of the points that a bit of Googling turned up. My comments in parens.

Some issues that some seem to have with it.

1. Some are concerned with the emotional effects on the surrogate. There are strong biological factors that make a mother get strongly attached to the child they carry, so giving it up immediately could be bad for them.

(tzs: I don't see how this is different from women who give up for adoption a newborn conceived the conventional waw, so this issue seems to me to be orthogonal to surrogacy)

2. Some say it promotes the commoditization of women's bodies, especially poor women. There is actually "surrogacy tourism", similar to "sex tourism", where people from wealthier western countries go to poor countries where there is a thriving trade in rental wombs. As with the women in those countries who serve the sex tourism trade, the women proving the wombs are often coerced into the business and are not getting the rewards.

3. Some say that there are already born children who need adoptive parents. People who cannot have children the conventional way should be adopting those children.

I saw a response to that argument, pointing out that a couple that waits until their careers are going well to try to produce children might try for quite a while to conceive before suspecting something is wrong, then might spend a few years trying various fertility treatments. By the time all of that fails, they can easily be too old to be allowed to adopt.

4. Recognition of surrogacy varies quite a bit around the world. Commercial surrogacy is legal in India. Altruistic surrogacy, but not commercial surrogacy, is legal in the UK and Australia. All forms of surrogacy are prohibited in France and Germany. In the US it depends on the state, some allowing commercial surrogacy and some prohibiting it [1].

This could lead to children with questionable legal status. If you had a couple from country X, a "no surrogacy" country, acquire a surrogate child in country Y, a "fully recognized commercial surrogacy" country, it might be possible to get a situation where there is no country that recognizes the child as one of its citizens.

(tzs: overall, from what I read, it seems no one has offered any good argument that surrogacy is inherently unethical, but there is a lot of potential for abuse, and a lot of areas it can touch that you could easily overlook such as interactions with things like citizenship. It seems to be one of those areas where you should regulate it from the start, rather than letting it develop commercially freely and then try to patch up any bad aspects you discover).

[1] https://www.creativefamilyconnections.com/us-surrogacy-law-m...

> We may be headed to a possible future in which technology makes it possible to decouple "romantic" impulses from the reproductive drive.

This type of techno-hubris, which thinks it can undo millions of years of evolutionary biology, leads to the type of utopic visions that devolve into murderous chaos.

What you're proposing isn't terribly different than eugenics.

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