Why do you say its unrealistic? Eugenics has been seriously considered in the past, and is likely to be seriously considered in the future.
If genetic modification and control becomes 'easy' and relatively safe I don't see why those in power wouldn't try to exercise control over that power. In that future its not hard to imagine lawmakers banning having children who would have inherited known genetic 'defects'.
Now imagine 'defects' are classified as having dark skin, or whats considered a 100 IQ today.
Gattaca is unrealistic because (aside from being intended as mass-market entertainment rather than a scientific extrapolation) it is simultaneously too aggressive and too conservative: it envisions a world in which instant genome sequencing can be done effectively for free on a global scale (which, as cheap as genome sequencing has become, does not seem likely to ever happen unless non-chemical-based processes are developed) while organizations use solely genetic information far beyond its predictive limits (set by heritability estimates, which are noticeably <100% for traits of interest like intelligence) and ignoring the overriding phenotypic information, but puts this in a setting where there are no genuine consequences to any of this, no genetic engineering, no embryo selection, all of which should make the society unrecognizable. If the Gattacaverse's scientific understanding and control of genetics were really as perfect as portrayed, none of the events would happen in the first place - it is ludicrous to imagine a world of genetically-engineered von Neumanns walking around and still needing human janitors, for example. Its poorly conceived world is mostly there as as simplistic grade-school-level allegory about 'how you shouldn't judge a book by its cover' with a genetics gloss. Which is fine as entertainment, but where we're going looks nothing like Gattaca.
>while organizations use solely genetic information far beyond its predictive limits (set by heritability estimates, which are noticeably <100% for traits of interest like intelligence) and ignoring the overriding phenotypic information,
Organizations cargo-cultishly over-emphasizing certain ability signals? Seems pretty realistic to me! "How many golf balls can fit in a bus..."
>but puts this in a setting where there are no genuine consequences to any of this, no genetic engineering, no embryo selection, all of which should make the society unrecognizable.
What? A key plot point was that parents go through a doctor to have kids, who then picks the genetically-best kid that the parents are capable producing. Those who don't (and have "god-children" or "de-gene-erates") end up with sicker, stunted kids.
Maybe that's short of maximizing the potential of the tech, but it seems like a genuine consequence.
>it is ludicrous to imagine a world of genetically-engineered von Neumanns walking around and still needing human janitors, for example.
Because they'd have automated it all? There will always be the 1% least-intelligent, who will take the roles that can't be automated. Perhaps it's unrealistic that someone would be mopping the floor, but that's just to save the viewer from having to be told "oh, 'janitors' now just press buttons and visually inspect the work of machines".
It is not realistic. Look at NASA - do they mindlessly go 'you must have X DNA' or do they do testing, like the women astronauts?
> Maybe that's short of maximizing the potential of the tech, but it seems like a genuine consequence.
It's not, because you get literally the same consequence by not genetically testing sperm/eggs at all and simply screening by motility and donor health etc - people who don't do that have kids with more defects. And 'short of maximizing the potential' is exactly my point. A world with perfect genetic prediction and too-cheap-to-meter sequencing simply will not look like that. Some healthier kids are the least of the consequences of generations of society-wide embryo selection with perfect prediction and universal sequencing.
> Because they'd have automated it all?
Yes. Assuming it's still even an issue.
> but that's just to save the viewer from having to be told "oh, 'janitors' now just press buttons and visually inspect the work of machines".
>It is not realistic. Look at NASA - do they mindlessly go 'you must have X DNA' or do they do testing, like the women astronauts?
They did further testing in the movie too! Note the treadmill tests that the protagonist was cheating on too.
But in terms of a general, big-org failure to properly use heuristics? Probably the most realistic part of the movie!
>A movie is nothing but what it depicts.
And some things have to be understood metaphorically because it would be too cumbersome to have to present the full picture and bring the viewer up to speed. That's just how the medium works.
For the story, it suffices that there exist people who do more tedious jobs because smarter people get the better ones. To show a more realistic scenario (janitor checking rooms on a tv screen and pushing buttons rather than mopping), for every dimension that changes, would take away precious minutes from the runtime for little narrative benefit.
When I watch Gattaca, to support my suspension of disbelief, I choose to retcon the sequencer technology a bit.
On the presumption that 99.9% of the people using the system are never going to act on information disclosed by the system in a manner that would not involve returning to the established system as a middleman, it simply cheats. Random samples of DNA are tested and sequenced, and a machine learning system leans heavily on databases of stored information to extrapolate findings that might be of interest to the customer.
Most people of Gattaca don't have a deep understanding of genetics. They just know what the computers tell them.
As such, pretending to be another person with donated biological samples is the low-budget option for evading the system. Those with enough power and resources pay to hack the system itself, such that the ubiquitous sequencers report more favorable results than they otherwise would.
This also means that a lot of the parents buying designer babies were getting placebo. If there was no obvious congenital defect, the docs just left the natural genome alone, and simply told the parents it was the best baby they could possibly have, while marking the genetic samples kept for reference as "valid". Yeah, that's right, I made the dystopia even worse in my own imagination. Not only is the society stratified by money, the foundation is 99% fraud.
>which, as cheap as genome sequencing has become, does not seem likely to ever happen unless non-chemical-based processes are developed
It seems pretty much inevitable that genome sequencing will use non-chemical (non sequencing-by-synthesis) methods in the future (I've worked for two companies that have developed such techniques with varying degrees of success). In the far-ish future I think we'll see a human genome for 1 to 10USD with a turn-around time of maybe 10 to 20mins. That seems pretty achievable using a solid-state nanopore approach.
I think even novel labeled/SBS approaches might be able to do interesting things here.
Wait a sec. If this dystopic future you cite is able to genetically engineer embryos, then wouldn't everyone be able to reproduce? (Less-fit people would obviously pass on less of their genes.)
And while your complaint about skin color is certainly valid, why do you abhor making humanity smarter on average?
If genetic modification and control becomes 'easy' and relatively safe I don't see why those in power wouldn't try to exercise control over that power. In that future its not hard to imagine lawmakers banning having children who would have inherited known genetic 'defects'.
Now imagine 'defects' are classified as having dark skin, or whats considered a 100 IQ today.