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The Woman Who Tried To Play God – Genetic Engineering & The Nature Of Everything

Pursuit of Wonder | October 17, 2025



A short speculative fiction story about a woman who thought she changed the world for the better.

This story is not intended to be factually accurate or informative on the science of genetic engineering.

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Comments

This post currently has 39 comments.

  4. @jkerman5113

    October 17, 2025 at 1:25 am

    These stories used to have way more of an impact on me until I actually got a mental illness. There's a big difference between a perfect life and a life with no major medical problems. The latter happens all the fucking time (at least til the end of it). Not having the latter takes away life, rather than giving it meaning. Are there more sad songs about having chronic/lethal illness, or about breaking up with someone?

    The feeling of helplessness and loss of meaning from having an illness that is incurable is one of the worst things I've ever experienced. I've experienced lack of meaning before this and it doesn't hold a candle. Our world is so inconcievably far from the "perfect" world hinted to in this story (even though the sum of its parts don't add up to that world) that to worry about it right now is what's really missing the point.

  9. @crew-coloradoriverentertai5197

    October 17, 2025 at 1:25 am

    A gifted 3-month old baby might be able to mentally figure out how to open a lock but could not physically do it. Nor could a baby that age be able to crawl – let alone walk – into another room and turn on a TV. They can't even roll over or hold their own heads up at that age. No matter how amazing their mental abilities may be, it takes several months for them to learn to crawl and longer to walk or master fine motor movements. They can't even get food from their own hands into their mouths with any regularity until they're at least 8 months old. I love Pursuit of Wonder but this imagined reality is just too far outside the realm of possibility to allow me to appreciate the points it makes.

  11. @ildarsh6329

    October 17, 2025 at 1:25 am

    It is very arguable that humanity will start to degrade in year 2177. Most likely the humanity will tackle the tasks, than we cannot even comprehend.
    Colonizing the Mars for example or building a Dyson sphere. There is no limit to human ambition.
    If everything can be changed with genetics, why don't simply remove "suicide" gene?

    In a nutshell it is just a tale with sad ending

  26. @saikoujikan

    October 17, 2025 at 1:25 am

    I have so many problems with the conclusion of this utopic world view.

    "People have difficulty finding meaning in their lives knowing they have little say in who they are and who they'll become"
    Genetics is not that all encompassing. The only thing that genetics does is dictate which proteins are produced at which times. There are so many other factors on human development which are entirely environmental in nature. To ignore the environmental factor is to ignore the majority of the human condition.

    "Being in good physical shape, having high intelligence, and achieving success are generally easy and aren't that impressive so people feel a void of motivation in doing much of anything."
    Even in a society of genetically perfected beings, environment plays a HUGE factor in how many of these things occur. Good physical shape can be influenced by training regime, food, level and type of activity, equipment, experience, and many other factors. That and not all physical states are best suited to all kinds of physical activity. Being incredibly muscular may be useful for weightlifting, but can be a huge burden for certain athletic feats like gymnastics, windsurfing, and cycling, wear drag really gets in the way of whatever advantage muscles could have provided. As such, extreme events may simply just get a bit more extreme. There is no "perfect body" for all sports and events, as such there would be a lot of people who specialise in certain sports, or specifically play sports that disadvantage their body type in order to see how their own athletic build stands up to it. So alternatively, athletic events would then shift towards versatility of skill rather than perfection.
    The same with intelligence, which again is not a genetically determined trait. A lot of what goes into intelligence is creativity and a person's capacity to digest information, make use of new ideas, synthesise their own original ideas. As a result, there will always be areas for intelligent people to explore their curiosity if given the chance. Either through composition of music, games, stories, by extensive study on history, philosophy, or through problem solving activities that may lead to huge engineering, robotics, physics, software, or pure mathematic developments. There is always something for people who have curiosity to do, and I simply don't buy this rather childish idea that "it's not special therefore it's not worth doing". These things are done for the challenge itself, not to impress people. But even then, there would still be competition, being intelligent gives you the tools to work with, but how quickly one works those tools and how insightful they are to aim their attention at the correct areas to make breakthroughs, that is what creates the competition.

    "Mostly everyone is diplomatic with each other, and conflict is almost inexistant"
    That's an oxymoron. Diplomacy by definition is the practice of conflict resolution. People cannot be diplomatic if there is no conflict to resolve. Just because people are not punching each other in the face or screaming themselves blue in the mouth does not mean conflict is not occurring. An intense debate with well reasoned arguments and carefully placed rebuttals can but just as riveting can be just as striking and stimulating as any boxing match. Otherwise debate tournaments wouldn't have grown to the world wide phenomena that they are today. Navigating social situations would simply become more nuanced, more careful, and if anything more conflict inducing as its own levels of rules and expectations may develop in certain communities (because remember, this stuff is mostly environment) Conflict would be ever present, genetics cannot change that.

    "There is very little risk of illness or early death so no one really appreciates what they really have."
    I don't see the correlation. We already have people doing thing thorough out human history, from when death was cheap to today where we have the longest lifespans ever recorded. People not appreciating what they have is what happens when people become to internally minded. When they only look at themselves and their own needs and wants. You see it with people drinking their lives to ruin in the middle ages, or the callous view to capital punishment and torture that also occurred. A lower risk of illness may allow others to live in a more cavalier way, but I think it is a big leap of logic to assume that people stop caring about life just because they no longer need as much worry for death. Especially because death still happens a lot in this utopia what with your later claim of suicide. That implies that there are many ways for life to be cut short, be it by accident, suicide, homicide, or other natural events like earthquakes. I would argue that a society that lives up to 200 years of age would find early deaths even more tragic, a death at the age of 50 would be seen as seriously by them as we see someone who dies at the age of 25. The tragedies would be felt even greater, and as a result, the longer a life span gets the greater the chance of someone's death any given year being seen as just this tragic.

    "No one has any form of anxiety, ADD, … Sadness or anything alike so much of the arts lose their lustre"
    So many things wrong with this statement.
    First of all this is a blatant contradiction. What the hell is motivating the suicide rate if no one is feeling any form of sadness. If everyone is contempt, then the argument against really falls apart. If they are contempt, then they are fine by definition, they could sit on a pillow all day and just be happy until their body tells them to go eat, and then they will, and unless food is scarce (which is a form of *conflict*), they would have no reason to die from self neglect.
    Second, The arts lose their lustre because people are not mentally ill? That is a terrible take on the nature of art and mental illness. To start with, there are a lot of great sources of entertainment that are jovial in nature, comedies and comedic things such as song, poetry, film, and theatre. But there are also many art forms which are more about execution such as dance, composition, fine art, etc. All of which grapple with the human condition not just by trying to express deep felt traumas, but by trying to push against limitations, be those limitations societal, social, or intellectual. If everyone was happy and this made life meaningless, you be someone is going to try and capture that in an art project of some kind. If the old world of art becomes something that people can no longer relate to, then either art addressing this would be created, or a greater effort would be made by enthusiasts to reinvigorate that area, because that would become the challenge that brings meaning.
    Third: Mental Illness is not a source of art. People do art IN SPITE of having mental illness, not BECAUSE. This last point is a huge misconception that so many people have that it really is quite frustrating to see repeated time and time again. Mental Illness more often that not will destroy someone's motivations for creating, and if not creating, then their desire for their work to be seen by anyone, and if not that then severely limit the scope at which they can network and have their work known.
    Fourth: Art is a form of communication that everyone knowingly or otherwise engages with. Some media are more difficult than others, and I would infact argue that in a society where everyone is genetically ideal, art which is predominately skill based will become a lot more popular, since it is not about what you have, but how you use it that makes art worth while, and like any form of communication, the subject will evolve and develop as more people use it, creating culture and symbols all their own that would have even the most inteligent individual working hard to even enter the scene. Heck, this might even produce a counter-culture of artists who rebel against how impenetrable it's all become, oh and look at that, a source of Conflict!

    There is so much wrong with your idea of this world, that I cannot take the conclusions of your video as anything more than pessimistic mindless fatalism on par with that of a teenager who just found out the world is filled with people who are not them, is having trouble thinking of other minds as complex as theirs existing, and so states they do not matter, and as a result, nothing matters, not even them.

  31. @NijeBitno72

    October 17, 2025 at 1:25 am

    I may be one of few but I would very much like to live in such a world. There's always something new to explore, create and contribute, don't think there would be so much suicides, especially not more than today, because health and mental issues are the main contributors to suicide, and you've mentioned both of them as being practically non existent. Also you didn't mention the number of homicides of today vs in such a future. People of today are not that far away from animalic impulses as we would like to think so therefore the human race hasn't yet reached the end of puberty, but I'm optimistic and look forward for such a future, hopefully in my lifetime as well.

  35. @sayanchakraborty2619

    October 17, 2025 at 1:26 am

    How could the perfect world be so imperfect?

    This is very simply to another video essay: Perfectionist Paradox- The Miserable Amount of Good.

    Interesting thoughts as always!

    Edit: She missed the point. Good and Bad is the fundamental property of everything that exists.

  38. @jacheto

    October 17, 2025 at 1:26 am

    It is a convincing story but I don't think that would actually happen. Humans are extremely good at adapting to different scenarios, if we can find a way to live a "normal" life even in poverty and extreme conditions, I don't think we wouldn't adapt to such a perfect life. By a 100 years from now, with no conflicts or health problems we could focus our attention into bigger objectives like expanding the scope of civilization towards other planets or solar systems. There will also be deep entertainment available such as simulations of the real life.

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