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Are you autistic? || If you press the button, no person with autism is ever born again (or become autistic through other means), though existing people are left unchanged. Do you press the button?

Yes | Yes
4.9%
Yes | No
22%
No | Yes
25%
No | No
48%

7,631 votesFinal results

208

125

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I'm not going to vote, because this is not just a fun thought experiment to me; I'll just say that things have never, ever gone well when people start trying to decide what kinds of people shouldn't exist.

Replying to

I think I generally agree, but how do you feel about extremes? Like, if you could genetically engineer humanity so nobody ever had a cluster headache ever again, would you?

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I don't think we know enough about the human genome and how it works, or human neurology, to safely say yes to this. Also this is really comparing apples and oranges. Autism is inherent to who we are as people on multiple levels...

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and

To my knowledge, people with debilitating headaches don't generally feel the same way, but I would really defer to them about what kinds of treatment options they feel are most needed, since I don't have that experience.

Aella

@Aella_Girl

Replying to

@epballou

So, yeah I agree cluster headaches are much more obviously bad. I just wanted to point out that "deciding which people can exist" is a spectrum that on one end seems actually like a really kind and loving thing, if you can prevent genes that cause huge suffering.

5:43 PM · Apr 13, 2020

Replying to

But here's the thing: To many, autism seems obviously bad and something we should want to do away with. But it's nowhere near that simple, and autistic people are overwhelmingly (though not absolutely universally) clear that we prefer to exist. That we value our existence.