There are plenty of people for whom the circumstances of their birth make them somewhat strange to other people, and yet live perfectly happy lives. Its far from obvious that our hypothetical Neanderthal wouldn’t be happy, even if he stood out in a crowd.
What card?
My point is that a clone of Inner Stickler raised in a Neanderthal society would be much different then the “real” Stickler, and that he doesn’t really know what would make clone Stickler happy. I suspect that a human raised in a Neanderthal society would be happier there then he would be if he were somehow magically transported to a human society.
You don’t think the knowledge that you are the only one ‘of your kind’ so to speak and that you were created out of some other species need to satiate their curiosity wouldn’t be fundamentally depressing and lonely?
I don’t think it would be anymore depressing and lonely then hundreds of other circumstances that regular people deal with.
Millions of orphans live with the rather depressing thought that their birth-parents didn’t want to keep them. Some do fixate on that and get really down, but most deal with it fine.
There’s no guarantee that any child will grow up to be happy. But I don’t think a Neandertal child is any less likely to be happy then regular humans.
I don’t. But one of the fallback positions people have been using in this debate is that if the cloned Neanderthals couldn’t fit into modern Homo sapiens sapiens society, we could give them a place to live similar to what they dwelt in before their species became extinct, and let them develop their own society there. I’m saying that’s really not an option any more. Living alongside us would be their only realistic option.
I agree, as far as stated. But… am I to understand that you are advocating raising them in a wholly modern culture, albeit with some unspecified allowances for their as-yet unknown nature?
Isn’t that putting a rather enormous amount of faith in our ability to rapidly identify what allowances are necessary, and successfully implement them, within single growth-to-adulthood spans, to yield people capable of living happily in a modern culture?
No, I really think there would have to be some kind of floor for their adult lives that recognized their humanity without requiring us to succeed in any particular degree of integration.
I think you are overstating this.
Of course there are active hunter-gatherer societies on the planet now, in regions that are marginal in various ways for agriculture. One repurposed parkland or “rewilded” area should indeed be adequate territory for the first several generations of a New Neanderthal HG clan. If they do then multiply, the burden on the land does not increase linearly, and increased density itself fosters diversification.
I don’t, either. With the knowledge of the existence of the modern world, and the availability of its knowledge, I would certainly expect NNs to do much more than emulate their forefathers (and they might never need HG as a primary strategy). I just don’t think it’s responsible to assume that they will do so to such a degree, within a single generation, that no special provision for their continuing existence is required.
Also, entirely apart from the question of their capacity for life in a modern society, I think it is quite likely that they would recognize themselves as a people apart. If we bring this most distant ethnicity into our world, would we not owe them a homeland of some sort?
Ultimately, criteria for what is “ethical” are dependent on an artificial paradigm. Absolutes (based, for example, on religious heritages) have gone the way of archaic humans.
I suggest the following litmus test to decide if cloning a Neandertal is at least internally consistent with your own ethical paradigm:
Would you euthanize such a being for the same reasons you would euthanize a non-human, or would you want to apply whatever standard you have for euthanizing humans?
Neandertals are probably quite close to anatomically modern humans. It’s difficult for me to protest the ethics of creating (any) contented being; but difficult to support the ethics of creating a miserable being. Higher intellect enables misery roughly in proportion to how highly the brain functions. That’s why it’s tougher to use chimps or dogs rather than rats in the lab; tougher to use rats than drosophila. For me, there is a high risk that a cloned Neandertal would have to be confined and managed in some way (particularly if the whole point of the experiment is to see what they are like), and such confinement raises the chance these created Neandertals would be discontent. Turning such an individual loose in the wild would be cruel as well, of course. If it turned out they were truly miserable, the real ethical dilemma would be, “Hey, do we put him down?” And I’m not sure I could support that. They might be very close to modern humans. It would be like euthanizing my odd cousin.
Since I cannot predict whether or not the Neandertal would be miserable, for me it’s unethical to create him because my ethical paradigm does not support euthanizing miserable humans (not even iiandyiiii or Orcenio )
(I’m OK with humans euthanizing themselves, but I’m not able to predict the Neandertal would be able to do that.)
I polled some kids from my neighborhood, and it turns out it’s simple: Do we have enough money to buy them happiness? If not, we should not be pro-creating. It’s been proven over and over: Parents who think money cannot buy happiness do not know where to shop.
Also: (Within my personal ethical paradigm) I can more reasonably predict–and even control, to some extent–how likely my own children are to have a shot at being unmiserable–yea; even happy. I don’t think it’s ethical to bring children into the world with known profound limitations. I’m underwhelmed that carrying a microcephalic child to birth somehow shows a “respect for life.” Ditto for many other forseeable genetic abnormalities. I don’t think it’s ethical to bring children into the world if I cannot reasonably provide for them. I get it that life is a crapshoot, but at a bare minimum I can reasonably foresee and ability to provide for and nurture my own children. I can try to provide for many unexpected eventualities, within reason. I have a reasonable ability to figure out to what extent I can parent them, nurture them, and deliver them into a functioning adulthood. If I can’t do that, I don’t think it’s ethical to have children.
A cloned Neandertal is a laboratory experiment. It may be human, but it’s not anyone’s child. Now if the first dozen turn out to be great, and they are just one more adorable, adoptable kid, I guess I’d change my opinion. But it’s the ethics of that first one that seems to give me the greatest pause. Would I be willing to euthanize it if I had created an odd human who was suffering greatly?
CP: I’m just going to agree to disagree on that point. We’ve raised countless non-sapiens animals among us, and we pretty much know how to make them “not miserable”. It’s one thing to say that if were able to pluck a full-grown Neanderthal out of his natural environment that he might be miserable living the life of a modern, but a Neanderthal raised thusly from birth? Extremely unlikely.
That could be a big problem. He’d have to be fully immunized and watched very closely by doctors.
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