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Good news! You get to choose the entire genome for your next kid.
Bad news: It's only two choices.
Worse: It's a) a naturally occuring genome and b) a randomly generated genome.
So what'll be?
I know I'm being mean here, but the premium natural gets is justified. Natural evolution doesn't really care about us, certainly not our feeling, but it leads to something that works. On the other hand, the average for careless major deviations from natural is oh my god fuck fuck what have I done and the best case is something like Down's.
And don't get me wrong, I'm the kind of guy who dreams about replacing his full body with improved cybernetics one day. But you have to be serious about this. Natural gives us a pretty high floor, all things considered. Especially if you get to choose the best among all natural options (which is what, for example, embryo selection with PRS is). You're correct it's not a categorical difference, but getting over this floor is damn hard. I'm not aware of any currently available major change to basic human biology that a) improves overall wellbeing and b) isn't just a correction towards a different, better natural option. Yes running blades let you run damn fast, no they're not overall better than regular feet.
Unless you're intersex or have other major biological sexual deformities the honest answer to "should I try to change to a whole different sex" is "sorry, we're not there yet". Sure that sucks and it doesn't mean we shouldn't keep on improving, but the current reality of trans medicine is much worse.
That said I have very little problem with letting adults to crazy stuff to themselves out of their own pocket. But it should be discouraged, it shouldn't be for kids, and it certainly shouldn't be paid for by society.
hello would you like to pick between my position and random bullshit that's nowhere near your position
Sure as I said, the beginning was a bit of a digression and it was somewhat mean. But that's because I'm quite annoyed nowadays by the blanket "natural doesn't mean good", and his stated position, as far as I understand it, is that natural shouldn't be privileged at all.
And to that no, actually, natural biology is pretty good, and improving on it is very, very hard. It absolutely should be privileged. Any deviation is most likely bad, which means even if the preliminary evidence looks decent, it'll still probably turn out to be bad. Medical transition already was quite questionable based on the early evidence, and now with more evidence, it seems worse. Which was expected, because see the sentence before it.
Edit: Also, after reading some of the other replies here by him ... Classifying, for example, "brushing teeth" as transhumanism and equating it with major changes to your own biology is far more silly. Firstly because brushing teeth isn't even necessary in the natural state, it's merely a solution to a problem of modernity, namely excessive sugar. And second, because it's just a variation of the very natural behaviour of cleaning yourself.
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