May 1st, 2024
diff --git a/resources/pages/blog/de-emphasizing-race.html b/resources/pages/blog/de-emphasizing-race.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..bfbb406 --- /dev/null +++ b/resources/pages/blog/de-emphasizing-race.html @@ -0,0 +1,217 @@ + + + + + + + + +Title:
+Date:
+September 10th, 2024
+ +I've de-emphasized race from Seekia's slogan, branding, and motivational writings.
+ +I've changed Seekia's slogan from the "race and genetics aware mate discovery network" to the "genetics aware mate discovery network". This is better for 2 main reasons. Firstly, "genetics aware" is more comprehensive, as race is determined by genetics. Secondly, people care more about knowing all genetic information about potential mates rather than specifically racial information.
+ +We define race by grouping humans by genetic characteristics such as skin, eye, and hair color; skin and hair texture, facial structure, and the alleles in their genome which effect physical traits. If we classify to an extreme degree, we could classify humans into hundreds of different races. However, most people only classify humanity into less than a dozen. Thus, there are two definitions of race: the low grained, low resolution, fewer quantity definition and the fine grained, high resolution, higher quantity definition.
+ +The idea of Seekia being "race aware" has 3 meanings.
+ +Firstly, "race aware" means that users can be aware of the race of potential mates. This is advertising an ability that most humans already have. In person, it is trivial to identify a person's race. Dating app users can usually tell what race potential mates belong to by looking at their picture, so long as their picture has good enough lighting and is high enough definition.
+ +Secondly, "race aware" means that users can be aware of the probabilities of racial attributes in their offspring with each potential mate by using trait prediction technology. "Genetics aware" is a more encompassing way to describe this ability.
+ +Thirdly, "race aware" refers to the app's ability to share racial information digitally, meaning that the app itself is aware of race. This is a harder-to-understand way of saying that the app allows users to share racial information and to filter/sort by racial information. Thus, I will no longer use the term "race aware" and instead explain the racial features of Seekia.
+ +Genetic information cannot be seen with the naked eye, unlike racial traits. Thus, sharing genetic information is the main feature which makes Seekia's technology the most revolutionary.
+ +My initial idea for Seekia was to be an all-encompassing genetic dating app. As I worked on it, I decided that it would take too long to add genetic disease and trait prediction features, so I decided to first create an ancestry aware mate discovery app. At this time, I was equating ancestry and race. "Be race aware" really meant "Be ancestry aware."
+ +Before releasing Seekia, I eventually added genetic disease and trait prediction functionality, but became convinced that ancestry was the most important and valuable information that users of Seekia desired, so I kept "race aware" as the main marketing point. Over time, I realized that ancestry, while still valuable for many, is less desired and important information for people to be aware of when choosing mates than disease risk and trait information.
+ +I later changed my definition of race to be entirely decoupled from ancestry. Decoupling race and ancestry makes much more sense, as 2 people with the same ancestry can be very different racially (siblings), and 2 people who look identical can have very different ancestries.
+ +I still kept "be race aware" because I thought that the most important aspect of Seekia is the ability to filter mates by their racial traits and their predicted offspring's racial traits. Now I realize that for most people, filtering/sorting by racial traits is much less desired and important than filtering and sorting by other genetic information. My guess is that even the ability to filter by ancestry is more desired than the ability to filter by race, as race is more visible by the naked eye than ancestry.
+ +I've also de-emphasized "cure racial loneliness" from Seekia's goals. It is true that there are people in our world who struggle with finding members of their own race to mate with. However, I overestimated the prevalence of this condition. I now believe that racial loneliness is uncommon enough that it is not worth using as a main marketing point.
+ +The concept of racial loneliness depends on how we define race. When using the less fine-grained definition of race, racial loneliness is not a problem for the majority of humans on Earth. Most people can easily find people who belong to their own race by using their own eyes to browse mates in real life and in dating apps. For individuals who cannot find same-race mates due to them being very scarce, racial filters can be very useful. For example, if other members of a person's race are less than 0.1% of the population, racial filters could significantly assist them. It would do away with the labor of having to view 1000 different profiles to find a single member of their own race. Thus, it is still worth keeping "cure racial loneliness" in Seekia's goals.
+ +It is unclear if racial loneliness is actually more of a problem now than it was for ancient humans. In ancient times, people were living among smaller populations, so they had fewer mates to choose from, but those small populations were probably very racially homogeneous. Mass migration and advances in transportation technology have caused the average person's pool of mates to become much more racially diverse. However, modern humans are living in cities and use dating app technologies, which gives them a much larger pool of mates to choose from. Thus, I don't think racial loneliness is a major crisis causing fertility collapse and despair.
+ +If we define race as a very high-resolution classification, then it becomes much harder to find someone who belongs to your race. But this isn't commonly referred to as race, but rather a lookalike/doppelganger. A doppelganger finder is a useful feature that is planned for Seekia, and many people would enjoy using it. Once Seekia is able to compare facial structures, doppelganger finder should be added to Seekia's marketing materials.
+ +Doppelganger loneliness is a very rare issue, not a major crisis causing singleness and despair. If people are requiring doppelganger mates, then their standards for mates are much higher than they were for most humans throughout human history. Framing it as a crisis is wrong, because finding doppelgangers to mate with is not substantially more difficult than it has been historically. The requirement for doppelgangers would be the new crisis, not people's inability to find doppelgangers.
+ +For Seekia, the goal of being aware of each potential mate's genetics is a better main marketing point than curing racial loneliness. Facilitating eugenic breeding is useful for all humans who wish to breed. Being aware of your potential mate's genetic traits and disease risks is useful in choosing who you wish to spend your life with, even if you never want to breed.
+ +- Simon Sarasova
+ +Below is a Seekia memo I digitally signed with my Seekia identity hash.
+You can use the Seekia application to verify its authenticity.
+ ++ +| «« Seekia Memo »» +| +|- Signature: +| TaGE2_yLw06DGhAsOA0HwOim3ZsQDq +| Mcrhxm6NoB5DqPXU4gHEFrWh4A7_08 +| SNUeiyCRRrsLa64aycNgxNoZAw== +| +|- Identity Key: +| f59a0bce855d6e48105612ae73ffabfc +| 4fac1349226433ff586e08b9b32ffd9d +| +|- Author: +| simonx5yudleks5jhwhnck5s28m +| +|- Memo: +| +| Ethereum Block Height: +| 20720094 +| +| Ethereum Block Hash: +| 0x3cc2fc6858b87c6dee72c325a6d2e22d1e9a5b501ae42c5a1ee9ab9cc7a6c5cd +| +| Date: +| September 10th, 2024 +| +| Author: +| Simon Sarasova +| +| Content Type: +| Blog Post +| +| Title: +| De-emphasizing Race +| +| License: +| Unlicense +| +| Content: +| +| +| I've de-emphasized race from Seekia's slogan, branding, and motivational writings. +| +| I've changed Seekia's slogan from the "race and genetics aware mate discovery network" to the "genetics aware mate discovery network". This is better for 2 main reasons. Firstly, "genetics aware" is more comprehensive, as race is determined by genetics. Secondly, people care more about knowing all genetic information about potential mates rather than specifically racial information. +| +| We define race by grouping humans by genetic characteristics such as skin, eye, and hair color; skin and hair texture, facial structure, and the alleles in their genome which effect physical traits. If we classify to an extreme degree, we could classify humans into hundreds of different races. However, most people only classify humanity into less than a dozen. Thus, there are two definitions of race: the low grained, low resolution, fewer quantity definition and the fine grained, high resolution, higher quantity definition. +| +| The idea of Seekia being "race aware" has 3 meanings. +| +| Firstly, "race aware" means that users can be aware of the race of potential mates. This is advertising an ability that most humans already have. In person, it is trivial to identify a person's race. Dating app users can usually tell what race potential mates belong to by looking at their picture, so long as their picture has good enough lighting and is high enough definition. +| +| Secondly, "race aware" means that users can be aware of the probabilities of racial attributes in their offspring with each potential mate by using trait prediction technology. "Genetics aware" is a more encompassing way to describe this ability. +| +| Thirdly, "race aware" refers to the app's ability to share racial information digitally, meaning that the app itself is aware of race. This is a harder-to-understand way of saying that the app allows users to share racial information and to filter/sort by racial information. Thus, I will no longer use the term "race aware" and instead explain the racial features of Seekia. +| +| Genetic information cannot be seen with the naked eye, unlike racial traits. Thus, sharing genetic information is the main feature which makes Seekia's technology the most revolutionary. +| +| «« History »» +| +| My initial idea for Seekia was to be an all-encompassing genetic dating app. As I worked on it, I decided that it would take too long to add genetic disease and trait prediction features, so I decided to first create an ancestry aware mate discovery app. At this time, I was equating ancestry and race. "Be race aware" really meant "Be ancestry aware." +| +| Before releasing Seekia, I eventually added genetic disease and trait prediction functionality, but became convinced that ancestry was the most important and valuable information that users of Seekia desired, so I kept "race aware" as the main marketing point. Over time, I realized that ancestry, while still valuable for many, is less desired and important information for people to be aware of when choosing mates than disease risk and trait information. +| +| I later changed my definition of race to be entirely decoupled from ancestry. Decoupling race and ancestry makes much more sense, as 2 people with the same ancestry can be very different racially (siblings), and 2 people who look identical can have very different ancestries. +| +| I still kept "be race aware" because I thought that the most important aspect of Seekia is the ability to filter mates by their racial traits and their predicted offspring's racial traits. Now I realize that for most people, filtering/sorting by racial traits is much less desired and important than filtering and sorting by other genetic information. My guess is that even the ability to filter by ancestry is more desired than the ability to filter by race, as race is more visible by the naked eye than ancestry. +| +| «« De-emphasizing Racial Loneliness »» +| +| I've also de-emphasized "cure racial loneliness" from Seekia's goals. It is true that there are people in our world who struggle with finding members of their own race to mate with. However, I overestimated the prevalence of this condition. I now believe that racial loneliness is uncommon enough that it is not worth using as a main marketing point. +| +| The concept of racial loneliness depends on how we define race. When using the less fine-grained definition of race, racial loneliness is not a problem for the majority of humans on Earth. Most people can easily find people who belong to their own race by using their own eyes to browse mates in real life and in dating apps. For individuals who cannot find same-race mates due to them being very scarce, racial filters can be very useful. For example, if other members of a person's race are less than 0.1% of the population, racial filters could significantly assist them. It would do away with the labor of having to view 1000 different profiles to find a single member of their own race. Thus, it is still worth keeping "cure racial loneliness" in Seekia's goals. +| +| It is unclear if racial loneliness is actually more of a problem now than it was for ancient humans. In ancient times, people were living among smaller populations, so they had fewer mates to choose from, but those small populations were probably very racially homogeneous. Mass migration and advances in transportation technology have caused the average person's pool of mates to become much more racially diverse. However, modern humans are living in cities and use dating app technologies, which gives them a much larger pool of mates to choose from. Thus, I don't think racial loneliness is a major crisis causing fertility collapse and despair. +| +| If we define race as a very high-resolution classification, then it becomes much harder to find someone who belongs to your race. But this isn't commonly referred to as race, but rather a lookalike/doppelganger. A doppelganger finder is a useful feature that is planned for Seekia, and many people would enjoy using it. Once Seekia is able to compare facial structures, doppelganger finder should be added to Seekia's marketing materials. +| +| Doppelganger loneliness is a very rare issue, not a major crisis causing singleness and despair. If people are requiring doppelganger mates, then their standards for mates are much higher than they were for most humans throughout human history. Framing it as a crisis is wrong, because finding doppelgangers to mate with is not substantially more difficult than it has been historically. The requirement for doppelgangers would be the new crisis, not people's inability to find doppelgangers. +| +| For Seekia, the goal of being aware of each potential mate's genetics is a better main marketing point than curing racial loneliness. Facilitating eugenic breeding is useful for all humans who wish to breed. Being aware of your potential mate's genetic traits and disease risks is useful in choosing who you wish to spend your life with, even if you never want to breed. +| +| - Simon Sarasova +| +| +| «« End Of Memo »» + +
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